


Reclamation

by DreamingPagan



Category: Black Sails
Genre: All the people that love James and Thomas come together to rescue them from the shame farm, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M, Grieving, M/M, So one day after the finale I sat down, and decided to find out what happens if Charles Vane is still alive post s4, and then the thought hit me that Madi and Vane would make a cute couple, and well here you have the results, explicit sex as of chapter 7, found family of a sort, not Silver friendly, post finale fix-it, you know - presuming he was out of action but not dead
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-11-16
Updated: 2018-12-02
Packaged: 2019-02-03 08:21:10
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 9
Words: 50,607
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12744567
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DreamingPagan/pseuds/DreamingPagan
Summary: When he's transported from Nassau to Jamaica, Charles Vane does not expect to leave the jail in Port Royal alive. When he's released as part of a prisoner exchange agreement at the end of the war -There might, he thinks, just possibly be something wrong with him, because he is about to go rescue James Flint from slavery with the help of a princess and an admiral of the English fleet, and he’s not quite certain but he thinks he may even have been sober when he agreed to do it.Edit: Chapter 6 was missing a bit and I have now posted it. If everyone could just... reread that chapter with the first section, I'd really love you all forever.





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> Ok folks. I wasn't going to post this yet, but for some reason, this holiday season is hitting me like a ton of bricks, and I need to be working. I need to be focused on a goal, and posting fic and getting feedback really, really encourages me to keep writing and not curl into a ball and sob for the next five months, so if you could just drop me a line, leave me a comment, or just shout "WRITE THE REST!" it would really help. Also, I'm reliably informed there are several of you that have been wanting this fic for a while, so - happy holidays, I guess!

He feels as though he’s been asleep for ten years.

It’s an odd thing, Thomas Hamilton thinks, to reawaken after so long. In some ways, he feels as though nothing has changed. His living arrangements certainly are little different. The work is the same - back-breaking, tedious, creating calluses on top of his calluses, the sun beating down and turning his skin a shade of brown he’s never particularly thought complements his straw-colored hair. In others -

He has James back. The knowledge is incredible, still, new enough that every so often he recalls and it feels again as though he had just looked up from the field to find a man dressed in red and brown standing at the end of the row, looking at him as though he might just possibly be the solution to a question he had not dared to ask himself in a very long time. He looks into green eyes - into James’ eyes, feels James’ arms around him, hears James weeping against his shoulder, and -

He has kept everything stuffed away for so long. In his mind, there is a Pandora’s box. It holds so many things - so many wonderful, awful, terrifying things, and until now, he has done a good job of keeping it closed. The hinges, if such a thing could ever have hinges, are rusted, the keyhole crusted over -

And James’ return takes the box, shakes it, and sends everything flying.

He is happy. That is the first emotion to come tumbling out of the box. There is no denying the joy that floods him with James’ reintroduction to his life - no denying the absolute relief and wonder with which he looks at his lover, that causes him to laugh and cry into James’ shoulder and into his lips for an hour after they first spot one another, to kiss him over and over and over again with no regard for anyone or anything around them. There is no denying, either, how he feels at having another mind working in perfect harmony with his own again after all these years.

“I’m gonna get us out of here,” James says into Thomas’ shoulder, his voice rough with emotion and with the accent he had hidden in London and now seems to have embraced, and Thomas’ breath catches in his throat at the notion. _Freedom -_ to leave here, with James at his side. He clings tighter to him, feeling as if something in his chest is about to burst, as if he can scarcely breathe, as he answers.

“Everyone,” he murmurs. “All of them. I’ll not leave them behind,” and he is relieved when James nods, no words needed between them. He understands - completely and fully, and he buries his face in Thomas’ shoulder again, as relieved to understand as to be understood. They walk back to Thomas’ meager quarters - to the quarters they will share until they can escape this place for good - and Thomas cannot help the energy that fills him - the restless itch as his mind blows off some of its cobwebs and returns to some semblance of itself as it once was. He is whole, or as close to it as he is ever likely to be again. He is overjoyed, he is shocked, he is -

Five days later, he lays beside James on the blanket bed they have created on the floor, arm still curled around James’ bare shoulders, and realizes that he is angry.

It’s a slow thing at first. He wakes with James beside him, and for a moment there is nothing but happiness. He is here, with James. Beyond all hope, he is alive. They are safe -

But not free.

The thought strikes him out of the clear blue sky - like a fact he has not processed entirely. It has not signified to him for some time whether he is free or not. He has had nowhere to go - no one to go back to, no hint of life outside these walls. James comes blowing in though, and -

He has spent the past two nights in bed with James. He has tasted the salt on his lover’s skin, has seen the bronzed tone of it where his clothing has not covered him, has mouthed over the earring that he has gotten in the time they have been apart and been held in arms that are far more muscular than they ever were before, and for the first time in six years, Thomas Hamilton wants _more_ than these four walls and this dirt floor. He can feel his mind stretching, the unused corners of it suddenly coming to light, and he cannot help but feel disgust for the way that he has been forced to neglect it for the past decade. He cannot remember the last time he actually cared about his appearance. He cannot recall the taste of good food or what it felt like to spend a day by himself, or the smell of a new book or -

The hundred, thousand things he has cut himself off from wanting all these years pile up suddenly, filling him with longing. He has been trapped here, stagnating for so very long and he is incandescently bloody _furious_ about it.

The sensation strikes him all at once one night as they sit in the bunkhouse they now inhabit. He’s not expecting it - it is so long since he has felt this, has felt anything but resignation and boredom. It takes him entirely by surprise, rising as he listens to the tale of how James has arrived here - as he grows to know the people that have inhabited James’ life, grows to understand what his lover has been through - as he realizes the depth of the horror that James has endured. Has been _made_ to endure.

“Stop.” The word is a whisper - something squeezed out of him almost against his will, that escapes before he can recall it, for surely he does not have the right to ask James to stop his tale - to stop the pain of it when James has had no such luxury for the past ten years, and yet -

“Thomas?” James asks quietly, his voice concerned, and Thomas looks at him, blue eyes meeting green. The sound of James’ voice saying his name is balm, and yet -

God, it has been _ten years_. Ten _years_ deprived of it and how dared they? How dare they keep him from the people he loved all this time - all these years? How did Peter manage to lie to him so effectively - so convincingly? Had he just been exhausted and made gullible by it or -?

He is shaking, he realizes - shaking with the power of what he feels. He has not felt anything of the kind in -

_“Quiet down!”_

_Thomas shakes, rocking back and forth, his knees drawn up to his chest. He has not stopped weeping since he arrived - since he was dragged from his home and brought here. He is cold, and frightened, and he cannot stop the sobs that tear through his form, or the tears that flow down his cheeks. He has brought them to ruin, all. They are in danger, and he is here, and dear God in Heaven, what has he done to so offend? What can he possibly have done to deserve this? He rubs at his wrists -_

“Thomas?” James voice, insistent now, breaks in on his reverie - on the horrifying memory that has just flashed through his mind, and he looks up, eyes fixing on James’ face, and the words will not come - will not move past his lips, try though he might, the anger choking him in its intensity. He has been imprisoned all this time. He has _sat_ here, all this time, while others have done this to James. He has stood here, in this wretched place, while Miranda withstood ten years believing him dead and buried, mourning him, only to die scarcely a week’s travel away from this place, unknowing and enraged at the fate she imagined he had suffered. He has been here while someone - a succession of someones, heartless cowards all - have convinced James of that thing which he feared all along - the thing that Thomas had so nearly cured him of when it had all come crashing down around their heads: that society has no place for him. That he is unwanted. That no matter what he does, it will never, can never, be enough. Thomas has been here. Trapped.

A prisoner.

The word goes through him again as it has not in years. It has not been important in so long - he has not been able to entertain the notion that any of it was important, without recourse as he has been, but now he can see what his inactivity has wrought in every scrape on James’ head and arms, in every scar that is new under his fingertips, in every time James’ voice catches as he tells him of some new atrocity the likes of which Thomas cannot imagine surviving, and Thomas Hamilton is _angry,_ beyond any fury he has ever known before. It is not the distant, righteous indignation of his drawing room - no. This is visceral, and consuming, and he breathes it in like perfume because to _feel_ again is a wondrous, horrifying, exhilarating thing. This - this feels like being alive again because it is personal. This is about James, and Miranda, and what has been done to them, and the bastards that have thought to harm them while Thomas could not intervene.

He closes his eyes, and then opens them again, looking downward to where James’ hand is resting on his knee. He cannot save Miranda - she is gone beyond his ability to aid, but James is here, and Thomas will be damned if he ever allows anyone to lay a hand on his lover in anger again. He reaches out, taking hold of James’ wrist, and gently, so very gently, slides the sleeve up his lover’s arm to reveal the fading marks that have been left on his wrist by the shackles they had brought him here in. He clenches his teeth, trying and failing to contain the thing that is rapidly clawing its way up his throat, taking hold of him somewhere in the center of his chest and squeezing hard. He traces his fingers over the marks, and the more he does so the more the desperate, howling thing in him wants to break free. This is -

It is not James he is angry at, and he has no wish to frighten him with the depths of his rage. He takes a deep breath, and another, until he can speak again without screaming.

“John Silver.” He says the name deliberately, slowly, his voice lingering over each part of the name. “He sent you here, like this?”

James nods, his eyes seeking the floor, lips pressing together.

“Yes,” he answers, his voice quiet, gruff, his other hand twitching where it sits on his knee, and Thomas closes his eyes again, taking a breath. When he opens them again, there is steel in his gaze.

“If I ever meet him,” he says softly, raising his eyes again to meet James’, “I’m going to make him wish he had never laid eyes on you, let alone had the chance to do _this_.” His voice shakes despite his efforts. His hand strokes over the marks; he raises James’ wrist to his lips, kissing where it has been injured, and James looks up at him, his eyes a study in shock.

“Thomas -” he starts to say, and Thomas simply looks back at him. James opens his mouth as if to speak, and then seems to decide against it, leaning forward, his elbows on his knees, hands taking hold of Thomas’ hand lightly, his fingers brushing over Thomas’ knuckles - his work-roughened knuckles that are bigger than James undoubtedly remembers them from having been broken once or twice. He seems to consider them for a moment - to consider the sort of life they speak of, the things that he does not know about but can guess from Thomas’ hand alone, and then blows out a breath.

“You wouldn’t be able to take him head-on,” he says after a moment. “I taught him nearly everything I know about swordplay.”

Thomas nods, and laces his fingers with James’, giving a huff of breath that is almost a laugh.

“You have my thanks for the warning,” he answers, and James grants him a smile that still makes his heart do a flip in his chest, everything in him singing that he gets to see it again. It is still a tentative thing, James’ smile, but the longer he is with Thomas, the more he uses it. Thomas suspects that he has spent the past five days looking positively ridiculous himself, beaming like an idiot at the very sound of James’ voice. He does not care. He feels the edges of his mouth curling upward of their own accord, and the tightness in his chest dissipates, joy taking the edges off of it once again. He can live with this. He can stand it. For James, anything.

“Of course, this all depends on the notion that we can make our way out of here,” James points out after a moment. The words send a thrill down Thomas’ spine. To go - to be free -

It has seemed like an impossible dream, all these years, but nothing is impossible if James is alive and here with him.

“I can’t very well defend your honor if we sit here and never leave,” he agrees, and James reaches forward, grabbing hold of his hand, gripping it with his own, gentle, but firm, the same way they used to in carriages where no one could see them. His green eyes are bright, and fixed on Thomas’ face, the earring glinting in the firelight, his teeth showing as he flashes a smile at Thomas.

“Tell me about the outer defenses,” he says, and Thomas feels himself begin to grin.

“They’re no patch on Windsor Castle, if that’s what you’re asking.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> At last - more of the cast arrives on the scene! Also, as usual, the gifs are the work of the lovely Bean - thank you so much!

“Get up,” the guard tells him. “You’re to be exchanged. Come on - up!”

Charles blinks, and stubbornly does not stand.

There are chains around his wrists. There are chains around his feet, too, and once upon a time that would have been enough to compel his obedience. Not now. Not ever again - so he swore when he was fourteen, and he’s not going back on it now. 

“Exchanged?” he rumbles, and the guard scowls.

“Shut up and get up,” he snaps, and Charles rises to his feet, surprised as hell. 

“Where are we going?” he asks. There is no answer - only the clank of chains, and the shouts of the other inmates, and then the hustle and bustle of the street as he is escorted toward Port Royal’s harbor, past the hanging bodies of the men he’d felt certain he’d join before the end of the month only hours ago.

The world, apparently, is stranger than he’d known.

 

_ Two Days Later:  _

 

The world, Charles Vane thinks, has lost its goddamned mind.

He’s not quite sure how he has ended up where he is right now. He’s been wandering for some time - wending his way among the huts, searching probably, he thinks, for a fight, or a drink, or both - or maybe just for someone to say something that makes some fucking sense. Fuck knows that’s been in short supply since he arrived this morning. 

_ Two hours earlier: _

_ “Charles!” Jack’s voice rings out, and Charles’ eyes lock on his friend. He steps forward, and Jack catches him in a hug, firm and reassuring but doing nothing for the wounds Charles has acquired in the past week or so. He returns the embrace as best he can nonetheless, clinging perhaps a second longer than he should, and Jack is smart enough not to mention it. _

_ “Jack,” he answers, pulling away, “how the fuck -?”  _

_ “I’ll tell you in a moment.” Jack looks past him to the small squad of Redcoats that have brought him to this point. “Release him,” he demands, and one of the men - the bastard with the keys - steps up and unlocks the shackles from Charles’ wrists, looking nervously at him the entire time. Vane bares his teeth at him, just to see if the kid will piss himself - disappointingly, he does not, but the scared rabbit look he gets out of it is satisfying in and of itself.  _

_ “Right - that will be all, thank you very much,” Jack says in that affected rich man imitation he’s so fond of when he’s won the upper hand. Charles has always hated that accent, but at the moment he doesn’t have the energy to punch Jack in the arm for using it, and if it annoys the Redcoats, he’ll put up with it. “Well?” Jack continues. “Go on, go away, or would you prefer I have a word with the Admiral?”  _

_ The men turn.  _

_ “That’s right, be off with you,” Jack mutters, and then looks to Charles. “Jesus,” he says, “you... look like  _ _ shit _ _.” _

_ It’s the truth, and Charles knows it, but that doesn’t mean that he wants to hear it.  _

_ “Fuck you, Jack.” The response leaves his lips before he even thinks about it, and Jack gives him a smile. _

_ “Come on,” he says. “There’s food waiting for us and -” _

_ “Jack,” Charles interrupts, “how the fuck did you do this?” Food is a tempting thought. He won’t deny that, but there’s a different one niggling at him, consuming him, and this won’t be the first or the last time he’s gone without eating. Something here is not right - he can practically smell it, and the look on Jack’s thin face confirms it for him. “ _ _ Jack _ _ ,” he warns, and his friend grimaces. “What the fuck did you do?”  _

_ “It’s not important at the moment,” Jack answers, and the alarm bells begin to ring louder in Charles’ head. “I’ll tell you when we get back to the camp. Charles -” _

_ “Where’s Anne?”  _

_ He’s placed it - the wrongness. Jack stands, alone save for a few men Charles doesn’t recognize, and he looks like a man missing half of himself - missing his shadow, almost, but Anne has never truly been that. Shadows don’t bite, after all, and for fuck’s sake when did he start getting poetic?  _

_ “Where is she?” he repeats, and Jack closes his eyes.  _

_ “Come with me,” he says quietly, “and I’ll explain everything. There will be time, I swear it. For now -” There is something in the tone of his friend’s voice that stops Charles cold - freezes his blood in his veins, even with the sun beating down on them. _

_ “She isn’t -”  _

_ “Not quite. Too close,” Jack answers, opening his eyes. “Charles - it was far too close. Just - keep that in mind, will you, before you judge?”  _

_ He wants to argue - wants to demand answers, but he can’t, not in the face of that look on Jack’s face. He’s always had a soft spot for the skinny idiot - it’s why he took him on as quartermaster all those years ago.  _

_ “Go on,” he tells his former quartermaster, gesturing, and Jack sags with relief. _

_ “This way.”  _

_ He leads them back toward the camp, away from the small clearing Charles had been delivered to. There is an odd sort of silence to their walk back to the camp - a silence that continues once they arrive, and Charles cannot help the tension that creeps into him. The camp, he thinks, is strangely quiet. There’s a tension to it - one he hasn’t felt since - _

_ There is a jangling step, and the sound of English voices, and Charles turns on one heel, hand going to his belt for a sword that isn’t there, his eyes seeking out the source of the sound. He finds it in the form of three men in blue coats - uniform coats, braids of rank shining in the sun, all heading away from them, and Charles turns back to Jack, eyes ablaze with fury, the suspicion that had been born on the beach now fully grown and turned from suspicion to certainty, and nevertheless when he opens his mouth, what comes out is a question. _

_ “What the fuck are they doing here?” _

_ Jack winces. _

_ “They’re here to oversee -” he begins, and something explodes in Charles’ head. In a moment, he’s got Jack by the front of his fancy fucking coat, holding him up against a wall, face inches away from his friend’s throat as if he might bite it out any second. _

_ “What the fuck did you do?”  _

_ Jack twists, and with a single movement, he is free from Vane’s hands again, an unfamiliar snarl on his face - one that Charles has seen before, in battle, but never directed at him.  _

_ “What I had to!” Jack snaps. His dark eyes burn into Charles, utterly fixed on Charles’ face, despair and anger and sorrow all rolled into one roiling in them. “Everything I could - all that and more, to bring you home again! To see Anne  _ _ safe _ _!” Charles should be listening. He knows it - knows it with everything that is left of what Teach had tried to pound into his head, with everything that he has learned from Eleanor about his wants and needs in comparison with the larger picture, but at the moment all he can feel is rage and shock and deeper down - an emotion he had never thought to feel again, about anyone. Hurt, riding the heels of betrayal the likes of which he is only just beginning to comprehend. He knows what Jack has done. He knows his friend - or he thought he did, but the man standing before him bears little resemblance to the Jack he rescued from an overturned carriage months ago now. Perhaps that explains what he has done. _

_ “You sold them out,” Charles growls. “Flint and the rest. Our allies. Our brothers.  _ _ Didn’t you? _ _!”  _

_ His voice rises on the last question, and he remembers all too well a time when that would have scared the piss out of Jack, but now -  _

_ He looks at Jack Rackham, and to his horror, he sees nothing but weary, bitter resignation on his thin, newly lined and worn face. _

_ “You have no idea,” the taller man tells him, “what we have all been through since you were captured. No idea. You cannot know what has been done - what I knew they would do to you, if given the chance. You don’t know -” _

_ “You were afraid of them hurting me,” Vane says, and Jack nods.  _

_ “Yes. Of course I was, and don’t try to tell me you don’t understand that, Charles. Don’t you dare -” _

_ Vane does not stop to think about it. He grabs hold of the neck of his shirt and in one motion, he drags it over his head, and then turns.  _

_ “Take a look, Jack,” he invites. He knows what his friend is seeing. He knows, because he’s seen it on others - the marks left by the lash, both old and new, the bruises, and the blood, and the puffy red inflamed skin that covers him from shoulders to waist.  _

_ “Jesus,” Jack chokes, and Charles turns back, something vicious in him feeling satisfied at the paleness of the other man’s face.  _

_ “The first set of those, I earned in Nassau,” he tells Jack. “A gift from Eleanor, or so I assume. She couldn’t hang me without causing a rebellion, but she couldn’t be seen to bow down to pressure either, so instead she had me flogged.”  He remembers that day. He remembers the heat. Remembers the crowd, and the pain. Remembers that bastard Captain Berringer reading out the sentence, and the moment that he had understood that if he had learned from Eleanor, then she had also learned from him - learned the power of a public statement. “The second set I earned five days ago, after I’d decided to fight my way out of the prison or die trying. It’s a little late to worry about me getting hurt,” he says, venom practically dripping from his words, “so why don’t you tell me what the fuck really made you do this?” _

_ Jack stands, horrified. He cannot seem to wrench his eyes from Charles’ abused torso, and he swallows hard, visibly trying to find words. _

_ “You don’t know,” he says again, softly. “Charles -” he looks up, and there is pain in his eyes, but there is determination there as well. “That is awful. I cannot imagine how much that must smart, but -” _

_ There are no ifs, ands, or buts about this. Charles takes a step forward, rage coursing through him. _

_ “What the fuck did you think they were gonna do that was worse than this?” Charles roars. “You think I went through this so you could fuck us all and let them win? What the goddamned  _ _ fuck _ _ did you think was worth giving up a war over, Jack?”  _

_ He takes a step forward. He does not know what has come over his former quartermaster, but he feels the overpowering urge to grab hold of him and shake until some sense falls out - until he hears something,  _ _ anything  _ _ that will make sense of what the man has done to them all. Until - _

_ “They  _ _ keelhauled _ _ Teach, that’s what!”  _

_ The words hang in the air between them, and Charles stops short. Jack stands, chest heaving, hands clenched at his sides - to all appearances a man pushed over the very brink of his endurance, and now advancing on Charles in turn, looming as only a tall man can over a shorter one.  _

_ “They murdered him!” he barks. “Right in front of us - strung him up by his heels and dragged him over the hull three  _ _ fucking  _ _ times until all that was left was a nigh unrecognizable ruin where once a man had been. Rogers did that, and it was my  _ _ fucking _ _ fault! Because I urged Teach to consider your wishes, to do what you would want instead of staying to kill the Guthrie woman - because I looked at the larger picture. His bloody lackeys nearly killed Anne, and that was my goddamn fault too and I could not allow them to do that to you as well!” He is panting, now, so close to Charles he could reach out and punch him, and oh, the thought is a tempting one. _

_ “You did all this in  _ _ my _ _ name,” he says, and the words make him sick at heart. “You gave up the cause - for me, when six months ago you wouldn’t even give up your fucking name for Anne. What the fuck happened to you, Jack?” he asks, and Jack rears back as if he had actually been slapped. _

_ “I’ve just told you,” he answers, and Charles cannot help the shiver that runs down his spine as he stares at the man who has betrayed them all. The moment is surreal - the whole fucking situation is, from the way that Jack is looking at him, to the way that he wants to pound him into a bloody pulp to the way that Anne isn’t there to prevent him from doing so. The world is turned on its goddamn head, and his friend is suddenly not his friend and - _

_ “Where’s Flint?” he asks, his voice strange to his own ears. Flint, he thinks, will not be happy about this. He won’t have accepted any of this, and that - that might just be the strangest thought he’s ever had, looking for goddamn James Flint to insert some kind of sanity back into the world, because someone, anyone, should be as fucking livid as Charles is right now. Someone other than him should be raging against this - this fucking cowardly betrayal of everything they have ever fought for, everything the men and women under their command have died for, this betrayal that has been perpetrated in Charles’ name even though he never wanted it. Flint, he thinks, will understand that. The man who had asked - asked, unlike so many others, that Charles think for himself - asked him who he was rather than demanding his loyalty - that man will - will - _

_ Jack is still looking at him, dumbstruck, and Vane feels his breath catch - feels his hands clench, his heart begin to pound. _

_ “Where the fuck is he?” he asks, and Jack does not answer, which means - _

_ Which means that he has yet another friend to avenge.  _

_ “Who?” he grinds out, and Jack flinches. _

_ “Silver,” he answers, and Vane sees red. _

_ “His own goddamn quartermaster?” he asks, and Jack nods. _

_ “Yes. Charles - wait, where the fuck do you think you’re going?” _

_ Charles has turned on his heel, heading back the way they came. _

_ “Gonna go find Silver,” he growls. “Should’ve killed that fucking weasel a year ago. I knew he’d be a problem but I didn’t think -” _

_ “Charles,” Jack says from behind him, now dogging his steps. “Chaz - wait!” He puts a hand on Charles’ arm, and he shakes it off violently, turning on Jack. _

_ “Either I go and kill Silver now, or I stay here and kill you,” he snarls. “I’m not sure which one of you I’m angrier at right now, and you should be fucking grateful for that. Get off me, Jack.” He stalks away again, this time leaving Jack behind. _

_ “You’ll never get to him!” Jack calls. “He’s part of the negotiations - you’ll never reach him alive! Charles!” _

He hates to admit it, but Jack was right.

There’s no way he’s getting anywhere near the negotiations. There’s what seems like half the fucking British army standing around outside the hut they’re using for the talks, in addition to whatever guards the Maroons have assigned themselves, and Charles doesn’t actually have any urge to die when it would accomplish fuck-all except to get him the fuck off of the goddamned island and away from these people who have, to a man, apparently decided that rolling over for the British is better than standing up like the proper pirates Charles had taken at least some of them for. It feels, he thinks, like everyone on the island - everyone in the damn West Indies, possibly - has suddenly, inexplicably gone barking fucking mad and Charles is the only one left that can see it. He doesn’t know what he’s expecting to find, wandering around the way he is - at least not until he stops, suddenly aware of where his feet have been taking him, as he stands outside the hut that Flint had been using the last time Charles had been here.

It makes a sort of sense, he supposes. Flint’s been a fixture in the landscape of Nassau for the past ten years - as close to a constant as anything ever gets in this place, and the notion of him being gone is strange - foreign. Unthinkable, and so Charles’ feet have brought him here, as though some part of him needs to see for himself that Flint is gone before he can believe it. He takes a deep breath. If he walks through that door -

There is a sound inside the hut - someone moving around, and Charles’ eyes narrow, his brows furrowing. There shouldn’t be anyone inside - not if Flint is gone. He strides toward the door, his eyes narrowed. If some fuck has decided to take the opportunity presented by Flint’s death to rummage through his things - Silver or some fuck he’s paid, maybe -

It’s not about Flint’s things. It’s not about the looting. It’s about the fight. He steps forward, his step falling heavy on the planks, hand clenching at his side - and hears the person inside the hut shift.

“I do not want your company.” The voice that rings out through the door is young, and clear, and accented - familiar, though Charles has difficulty placing it. “You may take your apologies elsewhere, along with your lies, John Silver.” 

Charles stops, his hand reaching for the door. He is not expecting the wave of relief that washes over him, sudden and unexpected and fierce, at the unseen woman’s words. He’s not the only one, then - thank fuck for that.

“Bastard’s nowhere to be found. I thought I was the only sane person left on this fucking island,” he says, and hears the woman inside the hut shift - hears the sound of a book hitting the floor, and a muttered curse. It takes another moment for the door to open, and then Charles finds himself faced with, of all people, the Maroon Princess.

“Captain Vane,” she greets, and he leans against the doorway with one arm. 

“Princess,” he answers, and he can see the relief in her eyes and in the set of her shoulders as they slump, relaxing from their former rigid position. The relief, though, is short-lived, for in the next moment grief of a sort Charles has rarely felt himself flashes through her eyes and her mouth flattens unhappily.

“If you have come to see Captain Flint -” she begins, and he shakes his head.

“I’ve heard,” he responds. “Not sure what I thought I’d find coming here, but it wasn’t you. I -” he stops. “Fuck,” he continues. “He’s really gone, then?” She nods, and he turns away, teeth clenched. It doesn’t seem real - none of this does. “Fuck,” he mutters, and she turns an appraising look on him.

“You were his friend,” she says, and Vane snorts.

“I wouldn’t put it quite like that, but yeah. Fucking hell.” 

She breathes out in a deep sigh and then turns away, back into the hut, but she does not shut the door.

“I had thought I was the only one,” she says, bending to pick up the book she has dropped. Charles shakes his head silently. She turns to look at him again, and he repeats the gesture, looking around the hut as he does so. He still cannot wrap his head around the concept of Flint being gone, and yet the emptiness of this hut drives the point home. There is nothing left of the man - nothing save the few possessions that Madi has neatly packed into a small chest. Vane moves inside the hut and sits down on the bed to watch her as she works. They do not speak - there is a strange, meditative kind of silence to this sharing of space, a mutual grieving that they do not speak about and that lasts for several minutes.

It is Charles that breaks it, finally.

“Wouldn’t have expected to find you here, doing this,” he says at last, and Madi goes still.

“Why not?” she asks. 

“You’re royalty,” he points out. “Thought you’d have servants for this. Someone to -”

“There are no servants on this island.” Her answer comes swiftly, and he stops, surprised at the vehemence of it. “No servants, and no slaves - only men and women who follow me and do as I ask because I have earned their respect. I would not lose that respect by asking them to perform tasks that should fall to me and only me. I would not disrespect Captain Flint by allowing another to go through his things. He would not appreciate -”

She stops, and then shakes her head.

“This is my task,” she finishes, and Vane nods. 

“Yeah. Sorry, I just -” 

She sighs, and passes a hand over her face.

“No,” she cuts him off. “The past several weeks have made me short-tempered. I should know better than to be rude to one who shares my anger, if not my grief. Although -”

She stops, and Charles bristles. She’s not going to say what he knows is coming - not if he has anything to say about it. 

“What?” he asks, his voice harsh.

“Forgive me,” Madi says softly, and Charles stands.

“I don’t know what you’re asking to be forgiven for, but I don’t think I’m the right person to ask,” he says, and starts toward the door. He does not want to hear this. He does not want to consider it, to be told -

“Captain Teach,” she says, and Charles stops. 

Teach - he swallows, and tightens his hand around his sword hilt, and when he looks back over his shoulder, he’s not certain what he’s hoping to see on her face. Grief, perhaps.

“I’ve heard,” he says roughly, and she bows her head.

“I did not know him well,” she says. “But I have lost my father recently. I know how that feels.” 

This - is not what he was expecting, somehow. 

“He was no father of mine,” he says, and it’s a lie, but he doesn’t give a shit, he’s not airing his grief here to her any more than he’d aired his guilt to the rodent-like man that had come to take his confession when they’d thought he might be executed in the morning back in Nassau. She won’t -

“He did not raise you?” she asks, and Charles has no answer, suddenly - nothing to tell her, and he cannot bear the look of sympathy on her rounded features. 

“Fuck this,” he says finally, and turns once more. 

“I am sorry, too, for Eleanor,” she says softly, and -

He does not recall whether he slammed the door on his way out, or whether he left Madi sitting, staring out after him - all he knows is that he needs a drink, and a fight, and for no one to see the moment that he breaks. Eleanor. Teach. Jack. Flint. The names pile up in his head, and he picks up his pace, heading for the sounds of voices, and the light of the camp fires on the beach. 


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Comments are loved and cherished!

It is heading on toward noon when Madi turns her steps toward the communal dining hall.

It is not often she comes here. Most days, she prefers to dine with her mother. Most days, there is peace, and quiet.

Most days, she is not avoiding her own rooms like some form of plague, hounded from them by the possibility of encountering an unwanted visitor.

He is not here. She casts her gaze around the room, and breathes a sigh of relief at the realization. It is not that she fears him - no, not that. It is simply that today of all days, she has no desire to see his face, to hear his voice - not unless she must. She takes a deep breath, and shoulders her way through the crowd, her way no longer unimpeded, cleared by Kofi. Now she gets herself a bottle of the least offensive alcohol they have in this place, and sinks down into a seat at the table, next to a man in a blue, naval coat, and prays not to have to speak.

"If it is perfectly acceptable to you, your Highness, I would like to be left in peace."

Her prayer, it seems, is in vain. The Admiral's voice is sharp, biting, his shoulders hunched, one hand wrapped determinedly around the neck of the bottle he is holding - not brandy or port, Madi sees, but rot-gut of the kind she would not have expected to see a man of his rank drinking. His uniform coat, Madi thinks, has seen better days - it is wrinkled at the shoulders and she wonders how long he has been wearing it. She does not care. His voice rankles within her, somehow - worse, even, than his newly mandated presence.  
  
"This is _my_ island," she answers flatly. She leans forward, her elbows on the table, scowling, and somewhere her mother is appalled and scolding her for her belligerence, for her arrogance in the face of a man who could make life very difficult for them in the coming years, but at the moment that voice is dulled, distant, drowned out by the screaming, raging one that has just lost purpose, lover, and friend all in one fell blow.  
  
"That sentiment sounds as if it comes from the victor of this conflict," the Admiral observes sourly. "Congratulations."  
  
"Had I won anything this month, I would not be here," Madi snaps, and the Admiral raises an eyebrow in either disapproval or surprise, she is not sure which - perhaps both. She does not comment further, and he turns back to his bottle, looking into the bottom of it in contemplation.

It takes only moments for the silence to break once more, but this time it is Madi who does the breaking.  
  
"Were the terms your people wrung out of mine not favorable enough for your liking?" she asks. She is not sure who this person is that is coming from her lips, but she does not care to restrain her. There is a burning sensation in her chest - her hands want to curl themselves, her mouth wants to snarl rather than speak - she wants, she thinks with a start of surprise, a fight. She wants to rip, and tear, and if she cannot do it with her hands - her untrained, still soft hands - she will do it with her words. They seem to have the desired effect - the Admiral turns, and it is pain she sees on his face this time.  
  
"I have no interest in the treaty," he snaps. "You may have won much recently, Princess, but I have lost something of great value to me."  
  
Madi blinks.

There is a white man sitting on her island. A white man in a Naval uniform, with his white wig on, sitting on her island, drinking her rum, sitting at her table. He is not here because she wants him here. He sits at her table, and decides her future, his future as certain, as indelible as the ink of the treaty that sent him here, and he tells her -

She is not quite certain, looking back, when exactly she lost her diplomatic reserve, but she is reasonably certain it may have died in a forest with James Flint.

“ _You_ have lost something,” she snaps incredulously. She rises. “ _You?_ What is it, exactly, you think that I have gained in recent months? You would speak to _me_ of loss - tell me what is equal to the loss my people have suffered! To the suffering they will experience because of _your_ people - because of your _treaty!_ Tell me what is equal to the loss of Captain Flint! What is equal to the loss of the man that forced your people to offer terms - the man that stood at my side through this conflict?!”

“That man was my _son!”_ Hennessey snaps, and stands as well, and Madi does not take a step back, does not back down, despite that he is tall. He does not either - he has been driven to the breaking point, it seems, and his voice, shaking and crackling with fury, bears out that impression. “You speak of Captain Flint,” he snarls. “You grieve his loss, as do I, but I knew him by another name, before you, young lady, were born. I raised him, I mentored him, and if you think I do not know the _pain_ of having him wrenched away by another, I can assure you you are badly mistaken, so you may _take_ the pain of what you feel for him at present and add to it the pain of having it happen a second time and _that_ is why I wish to be left in peace!”

He stands for a moment, panting, and Madi stands - simply stands, waits for him to regain his breath, waits - and feels the moment when the fury drains out of him and leaves behind only grief. He sinks down into his chair again, and Madi remains standing, her hand braced flat against the table with the shock of what she has just heard.

Captain James Flint had a father. A family.

She is not sure whether she can believe him. She is not sure whether she wants to, whether she can afford to -

If she is right, it could be the leverage she needs. If she is wrong - well. It is not as though she has any political capital left to lose.

He does not look up at her - he does not speak again, and after a moment, Madi sits down again.

“You knew him.”

The words come from her mouth in a strange tone. She is not sure that she believes him, but in this moment, it does not matter. She wishes to, though - wants to trust in his story. She cannot quite fathom why this matters to her - why it seems suddenly so important, but she cannot imagine not asking. She has spent the morning packing up Flint’s things - his books, his papers, his clothing and some small trinkets - and while there is much she knows and understands -

Madi will never see him again. She will never finish understanding the man who saved her life, and she knows he would hate that. He wished to be known - she knows that as surely as she knows anything about him. She refuses to allow Silver to hold the sole privilege of understanding the man he has condemned. Perhaps this man can tell her more - can fill in the holes, or at least one of them. Anything must be better than what she feels at present, and for a moment the desire to have someone - anyone, share her pain is too much. She can feel the rage drain from her, replaced by sorrow. Hennessey seems to sense the difference - he turns to look at her, and something of the same seems to pass over his aged face.

“I knew him,” he agrees heavily, and Madi looks downward toward the table.

“I did not know,” she says, and Hennessey gives a huff of breath - exasperation, she thinks, coupled with resignation.

“No,” he says, “I imagine he did not speak of me.”

She shakes her head, and Hennessey nods silently.

“Perhaps that’s just as well,” he murmurs. It is an odd sentiment - one that Madi will pursue later, but for now -

“You knew,” she says quietly, “that he was not here. You know - what it is that occurred.”

She prays that he will answer in the affirmative. She does not wish to have to tell him what has become of Flint - cannot be the one to deliver the news of his death. She cannot face Hennessey’s renewed grief on top of her own, and she feels abject relief travel through her when he nods again. It is quickly followed by confusion.

“Why come?” It’s a simple question. If he knows that Flint is not to be found, then why…?

Hennessey sits back in his chair, his gaze still fixed upon his cup. He looks up, and there is something lost in his gaze.

“When I arranged to be assigned to this post - when I arranged to come to your island -”

He shakes his head.

“I have no intention,” he says quietly, “of becoming a lodestone tied around your neck. I was sent to oversee the ruling of the island - to serve as spy, advocate and, I imagine, saboteur if required. I did not come to do as I was bid. I came here, your Highness, because another man did not want the post. I came here because someone had to, and because -” He takes a deep breath. “I had hoped to speak with Captain Flint,” he confesses. “You are an intelligent woman - you can likely guess that we did not part on good terms. I had hoped to make amends, but now -” He gestures to the room around them and, by extension, she supposes, the island they currently sit on. “Whatever may have passed between us - whatever I have done for which I must atone - I could not help but feel that that atonement must be begun on this island if it could not be done in Nassau. For however short a time, he called this place home, and I would like to know, if I can, what it is he saw here worth fighting for. Worth -”

 _Dying for,_ he does not say, but she hears it nevertheless, and for perhaps the tenth time today, she feels grief wash over her. Grief - and anger.

“The story that has been passed around,” she says finally, wearily. “If you know him as well as you say, then you know that it is just a story.”

Hennessey fixes her with a gimlet stare, and then returns it to his drink. He seems to consider it for a moment, and then he looks up again.

“I know,” he says slowly, “that I came to this wretched part of the world in search of my son. I was told that he had retired, and I was further informed that he had done so not hours after securing one of the most decisive victories of his career. I was told-” His mouth turns downward in a disgusted expression, “that he had packed up and left without so much as a word of warning to his allies and without saying goodbye to those he cared for, and if you believe any of that, then I have got two heads and can fell men with one look from my eye.”

He drains his glass, and pours another.

“He is dead,” he says, his voice rough. “I cannot imagine that anything less would suffice to remove him.” His hand shakes, and he tosses the drink back. Madi regards him seriously.

“You are the second man I have spoken with today that still possesses a conscience and some measure of sense,” she tells him, and he raises an eyebrow.

“We are in scarce supply, it would seem,” he acknowledges. “Your Highness - if you have any knowledge of what has truly happened - what has been _done_ to James -”

She shakes her head.

“I wish I did,” she answers. “I know the man who knows. I know that he can tell me, but he will not, not, he says, until the treaty has been ratified, and I have not the means to wring it from him. I have no allies - Julius has claimed what support I might have mustered, swayed enough people to his cause that I am forced to go along with them, or lose what little influence I still retain. It is his voice they are hearing - his voice they are all hearing.” She stops. If she continues - if she allows herself this grief now - She takes a deep breath, and releases it, and looks away. Hennessey watches her, sympathy on his face.

“This man you speak of,” he says. “Who is he? What is his name?”

She looks back to him. There is an intensity to his voice - intensity Madi recognizes all too well, and if the Admiral is acting a part, she thinks, then he is doing so well. Too well. Then again -

She closes her eyes. Her judgment, she thinks with a touch of bitter sorrow, has been proven faulty of late. She cannot afford another mistake. And to tell him the name -

It is tantamount to betrayal. She shakes her head and opens her eyes again - she has no proof, and until she does, she will offer no name to this English Admiral. She may feel anger toward John Silver. She may, she thinks, even hate him, but she will not become him.

“Admiral,” she starts, “I have no evidence. I cannot -”

The door opens, and Madi stands. The man standing in the doorway is familiar - one of the few Julius has not won away from her.

“Your Highness,” he says, breathless. “Your Highness - the treaty - they are about to ratify -!”

She stands abruptly.

“Apologies, Admiral,” she says. “I must go.”

“If they are ratifying the treaty -” Hennessey starts, standing as well, and she shakes her head.

“Your presence would not be taken well,” she says. “I will see to it. I will have answers.”

Hennessey sits again.

“Your Highness,” he acknowledges. He sounds frustrated and angry, and Madi cannot help but sit back down.

“I will find out what has happened to him,” she promises quietly. “I will know, and when I do, I will tell you. By day’s end, we will know.”

She means the words. She has spent the day angry - has spent the past three months furious, and now it is all coming to a head. She will have answers today - if she has to shake them out of John Silver herself, she will have them, and so will the man across from her, and she is absolutely infuriated to be forced to add another victim of Silver’s machinations to her list.

“And when you do?” Hennessey asks, and she reaches out - places a hand on his arm, her gaze intent.

“When I do, there will be a reckoning.”

*********************************************************

There is no solace to be found in rum. He has tried it - he has drunk his way through a bottle, and another, and the burning, aching sensation in his throat has not abated. His chest is still tight with grief - his eyes still burn, and he can feel hands pulling at him, can hear someone speaking to him, but he’s weeping - weeping like a child, and Jack’s voice can hardly reach him.

“Charles - Charles!” The taller man’s words finally penetrate, and Charles looks up.

“What the fuck do you want?” he spits, and Jack looks dumbstruck for a moment.

“Charles…” he starts, but the venom in Charles’ voice is too much, the hatred in his gaze is too much, and Jack swallows hard. His grip loosens, and just for a moment, Charles wonders if he will cry. If he will get down on his knees and beg for forgiveness the way he might have a year ago. He does not - he only closes his eyes for a moment, and then opens them again, and hauls Charles to his feet.

“Charles, please,” he says when Charles attempts to pull away. “Come on. There’s food to be had, and if you’ll just please get some of it down you, I swear I will leave you alone to your grief. Please - please.”

It’s the please that does it, somehow. He’s angry. He’s still fucking furious, and going to stay that way, but -

He nods, and allows Jack to lead him to the dining hall, and throws his head back as he does so, draining the last drops of rum from the bottle in his hand. It won’t do him any good - the grief and the rage and the pain in his back are too much for it to help, but the gesture’s better than looking at the back of Jack’s head, wondering if he should love him for this or hate him.

In the end, all he says as Rackham sees him through the door to the dining hall, is -

“Fuck you, Jack.”

***********************************************************

Silver follows her away from the meeting and into her chambers. She knows the moment his footstep sounds, the moment that he crosses her threshold into the room. She is waiting for it - waiting for him.

Madi’s world changes in the space of minutes.

She knows, now, how to get what she wants out of John Silver. There is a simple trick to it - deny him what he wants, and he will speak. She has had so little, before now, that he wants. She has had so little to bargain with but now - now, when he wants her forgiveness -

He will never earn it, but she may give him the illusion that he might. Just for now - long enough to get an answer.

“He trusted you,” she accuses. “He was your friend - and you killed him!”

She hurls the words at him, expecting to hear a confirmation. Expecting to hear an excuse, but what she gets in return -

“No.”

Madi is not expecting that. She can feel the moment that her breath catches in her throat. She can feel the moment that the world begins to spin again, slowly, as if encouraged to do so by a child that has not quite grasped how to make it go faster, but spinning, nevertheless, faster now, and she takes another deep breath, as Silver says -

“I did not kill Captain Flint. I - unmade him,” he says, and the five minutes that follow are some of the worst of Madi’s life. He explains - and as he explains, Madi begins to understand. She begins to realize -

She is going to be sick. Her head pounds with her racing pulse, her hands are going numb from clenching them at her sides, and there is a roaring in her ears to match the screaming of her heart. The horror of what she is hearing is going to make her ill, and there is nothing she can do to stop it.

There is a _plantation_. There is a plantation in Carolina, and Captain Flint - _James -_ and his Thomas -

She can feel herself shaking. They are there. They are both there, toiling in the hot sun, working at the direction of another. Living at the direction of another, held behind bars and watched every minute of every hour of every day, no more free to go than Madi’s mother and father had been as chattel property to the Guthries. No more free men. Slaves, whatever Silver may say of the place. He has given up their war - for this. Given up _everything -_ for this - this -

She is going to kill Silver. She can feel her teeth clench. She can feel her blood boil, and when she speaks, she sincerely hopes that Silver can hear not only her voice, but Flint’s.

“You didn’t just betray my trust. You have planned to betray it - all that time.”

There is silence. The silence is the worst of it - the lack of a denial, even, and she can scarcely manage to string words together, but the ones she does manage are whole-hearted.

“Get out.”

“I will wait - a day, a month, a year,” he offers. He does not seem to hear her demand. He does not seem to care that she has made it, and that, as much as anything, infuriates and enrages her.

“Get out,” she repeats, and her voice cracks, and -

The energy that thrums through her veins is purest rage, and behind it - behind it -

She tells herself she will not cry, and yet the tears are falling before Silver has turned and finally heeded her order.  His uneven step fades into the distance, and her tears continue to fall for some time after he has gone - until she can breathe, until she can think again, and when she can, she turns on her heel, heading for the hall where she had left Hennessey, bent over his bottle. They must speak - and then together they must go and fetch Charles Vane.

Flint is alive. He has been sold - he has been subjected to an ordeal she can only barely recall herself, but one she knows all too well from listening to the tales of her people, and to her parents. He is alive, and he is in immediate, terrible danger, and -

She cannot save her people. They have signed the treaty - sealed their fate and ended her war, but she can save James Flint. She can save her friend.

She is going to save him, by whatever means necessary.

*************************************************

_The dining hall:_

The yelling that starts from the meeting house reaches the dining hall quickly.

“The treaty is ratified!” someone shouts. “The war is over! It is done!”

It is going, Hennessey thinks morosely, to be impossible to have a moment’s silence for quite some time.

The dining hall has filled with men he does not recognize sometime in the last hour. The room is stuffed, now, with Maroons and pirates, all waiting, and the sound that goes up from the assembled crowd at the announcement is a mix of jubilation and disgust in equal parts. Chairs shove out from the table at the announcement, and some men leave, while others seem to be settling in to stay. In other circumstances, Hennessey might mark the latter group - they are the ones, he imagines, who either wish to drink away their sorrows or are about to make themselves comfortable on the island for the foreseeable future. Now, though, he simply goes back to his drink, his back to the room, ignoring, as far as possible, the lot of them.

“Well,” Augustus Featherstone says, “that settles it.” He turns back from his post just outside the hall. “The peace treaty’s been ratified. War’s over. Time for everyone to pack their bags and-”

“It’s time for you to shut the fuck up, unless you want to lose your tongue,” a gravelly voice threatens, and Hennessey turns.

Of course, he thinks. He might have anticipated it, even. Where there are sailors, there will inevitably be a brawl.

The man in the corner looks - familiar somehow. He should recognize him, he knows - the long brown hair, the distinctive profile, the light blue eyes. Hennessey frowns at him for a moment, attempting to place his face. His memory, he thinks, is not normally faulty, but he has been sitting and having a quiet drink for the past several hours, and it is beginning to show - as is the pirate’s irritation.

“Something to say?” he asks, and Hennessey raises an eyebrow.

“Should I have?” he asks, and the pirate scowls.

“Men like you,” he says, “you’ve always got something you want to say.”

“And men like you,” Hennessey answers, “have usually got more bravado than good sense.”

He is becoming irritated now. There is an itch in his bones - an itch he has not scratched in many years, and should not now, but the younger man irks him, somehow - something in his drawl, perhaps, or the way he looks at Hennessey, insolent and sullen - defiant, and if he were listening, he might be put in mind of James, but he is not listening - not now, not ever again, and dear God, is he ever, ever going to stop seeing shadows wherever he goes?

“Go ahead,” the pirate invites, jerking his chin at Hennessey. “Say it. I can see it in your face. Go ahead and tell me to shut up.”

There is a dangerous look in his eyes. He wants this - Hennessey does not know why, but he knows that much, and since he does know, he himself should know better. He’s old enough to know better, certainly. He’s dealt with men like this before.

Men that need to be taken down a peg, something in him, probably the drink, whispers, and for once he’s not inclined to silence it. He is alone on an island. His career is done. His patience is gone, buried in his grief. His son is very likely dead, and Eirnin Alexander Hennessey is done pandering.

He stands.

“If I tell you to keep your tongue behind your teeth, I don’t suppose there is any chance you will do it,” he says, and the pirate sits up. There is a strange intensity to him now - he is not drunk, Hennessey recognizes, and finds himself relishing the challenge all the more.

“Don’t suppose so,” he answers. “I lost a brother to your peace today.” There is an angry mumble, and the pirate turns. “You all know who I’m talking about,” he says loudly. “No use pretending you don’t. He’d be fucking disgusted with all of you.” He turns back. “A hundred good men lost,” he says. “Men worth a hundred of you, each.” He spits on the floor, and Hennessey feels his blood begin to boil.

“I have lost a son to your war,” he snaps. “Do not complain to me of lost relatives!”

“A son, huh?” the pirate says, and then grins. “I’ll bet he was a stuck up prick just like you,” and then they are headed toward each other, the pirate exploding out of his seat in a flurry of movement, Hennessey moving out of the way of his lunge -

The door opens. The woman standing in it arrests all motion in the hall, everyone caught, staring, at her silhouette - as she steps into the room, at the look on her face, unamused, unyielding, severe.

“Everyone in this hall will leave it,” she says, and her voice carries through the hall. “Now!”

She looks to Hennessey and the pirate with whom he is about to exchange blows.

“Admiral Hennessey,” she says, and the disappointment in her voice is as scorching as it is gentle. “Captain Vane.”

There is an awkward silence. Neither of them speak - Hennessey does not know what is traveling through Charles Vane’s head, but if it is anything like that going through his own -

He is not proud of the past ten minutes. Neither, apparently, is Vane.

“I don’t suppose you’d believe me if I said he started it,” Vane says at last, and Madi shoots him a look. Shame, it seems, is universal, even among pirates. “Worth a try,” Vane mumbles, and Hennessey cannot help it - he snorts, and Vane raises his head, looking over to him again, murder in his eyes.

“Keep laughing,” he invites, and Hennessey glares. He opens his mouth to speak - to defend himself -

And Madi steps between them, dark eyes flashing, storm brewing in her face.

“We do not have time for this,” she snaps. “Captain Flint does not have time for this.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There's another gif that's meant for this chapter, but I think it's going in next chapter to keep Ao3 from rebelling. Hopefully it will work there. As usual - all gifs are done by the talented and awesome Bean!


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Gifs are by the lovely Bean. Comments and kudos are loved, appreciated, and keep me writing!

_"Captain Flint does not have time for this."_

Had there been a thunderclap to accompany her words, Madi could not possibly have achieved a more profound, stunned silence from the men in front of her.

The hall has gone silent. Everyone has left - save the three people still standing by the head of the table, arranged in a semi-circle, frozen in place with the gravity of the news Madi has just delivered. She stands, her hands held in front of her, clasped, straight and calm, and waits for their reaction. It is coming - she can feel it in the tension in the air, but more, she can read it in their faces. Vane looks vaguely as if she had hit him over the head with a chair - indeed, that might have been more expected, but there is a dawning realization on his sharp-featured face, and with it a sudden fierce focus that was missing when last they spoke, and she cannot help but be relieved to see it returned. Hennessey, on the other hand -

“He is alive.”

There is a look on Hennessey’s face - one that confirms his earlier tale, at least insofar as Madi is capable of confirming it at all. It is shock, mingled with grief, and now, bright hope as he steps toward her.

“He lives,” he repeats, suddenly urgent. “Tell me what you know, quickly, or so help me God - What the _hell_ has happened to him?”

In his urgency, he sounds exactly like his son. His tone is sharp, his gaze intent. Even his bearing is familiar, and for a moment - just one - Madi cannot help but be comforted by it.

“I spoke with Silver,” she confirms. “He is alive.” She does not hear Hennessey breathe a sigh of relief, but she sees his fists unclench and his back straighten, as if a weight had been lifted. Vane, on the other hand, looks more tense if anything. His brows are drawing together - his mouth becomes a line composed out of purest concern and anger, and she sees small lines form at the corners of his eyes as they narrow.  Focused, directed anger, and when he speaks, his quiet growl is almost soothing to the part of Madi that wishes to rip, wishes to tear, wishes to cause mayhem to match the howling in her soul.

“Where is he?” he asks, his tone menacing, and she meets his gaze head-on without flinching, speaking to him directly.

“There is a plantation,” she tells him. She needs say no more - Vane freezes, and Madi holds his gaze, and feels a piece of herself slot back into place at the look in his blue eyes.

“A plantation,” he repeats. It is not a question. It is the rumble of thunder that comes before the storm, and she nods, agreeing more with both his statement and the sentiment behind it than with anything else she has heard in the past three months.

“North of Spanish Florida,” she says. “Where they farm _sugar cane_.” She can see Vane’s eyes widen - can hear the way he stops breathing for a second and then starts again, his hands clenching into fists at his sides.

“A fucking slave camp,” he says. “They sent Flint to a _fucking slave camp,”_ and she nods. He is standing there - standing with a brand on his shoulder the match of any in this camp, and if any white man was ever going to understand this, it is he. She is not disappointed in her expectations.

“He’s been there for three months,” he says, voice soft.

“Yes,” she agrees, and Vane takes a step closer.

“Three months,” he repeats. “Three fucking months, and we’re only finding out now? Three months. Jesus _fucking_ Christ -”

Sugar plantations are not safe, and James Flint has been enslaved in one for three months without their knowledge.

“I know,” she says quietly. Vane’s hands clench tighter. Neither of them speaks the sudden fear that has welled up within them - neither of them has to.

“Did the bastard who told you have any last words?” he asks, and she cannot help but clench her teeth.

“He informed me,” she says, “that he was not sorry. That he did it for my own good. For Captain Flint’s _own good._ ”

She hears a sound behind her - a sharp intake of breath, and she turns to Hennessey, a grim look on her face.

“I am sorry, Admiral,” she says, “to bring you such news. And glad.”

She is elated. She is horrified - she is angry, and frightened -

And not, it seems, alone in any of those emotions.

“I’ll be glad when I’ve dealt with the son of a bitch,” Vane growls. He does not say anything further - in an instant he is moving, heading toward the door, and Madi -

Madi watches him leave.

“If he kills Silver -” Hennessey starts, and she turns to him, only to see him quiet. “No,” he sighs. “I do not suppose it would be much of a loss.”

“It would not,” she says, her voice hard, and he nods. There is a brief silence between them, and then -

“I do not wish to see this island go up in flames, should there be repercussions,” he points out, and she sighs.

“I do not either,” she admits. “I see nothing wrong with giving him a moment’s head start, though- do you?”

He looks at her.

“Sugar cane?” he asks, and she nods grimly.

“I am told that he resisted,” she says. “Fiercely.”

Hennessey looks out the door, and then she sees him clench his teeth - sees him lean back against the table, nearly sitting on it.

“He may have ten minutes,” he says. “And then come hell or high water, the three of us have a task to embark upon.”

_Oglethorpe’s Plantation:_

They cannot burn this place to the ground fast enough.

When they leave here - when they are finally, finally free and clear - James is going to take them somewhere safe. Somewhere like Boston, perhaps - or Paris, or a cottage in the middle of nowhere - anywhere but here, and once they are there -

There are those who might call his current task meditative. James, however, just calls it infuriatingly dull, and not for the first time today, he shoots a look to Thomas in the next row. He still stands tall and straight, when he takes a moment to do so. They have not taken that, at least, but James cannot help but imagine the first day he had been set to this particular chore. He remembers all too well how his palms had bled from the work when he had first come aboard a ship as a lad - had Thomas, with his soft, lordly hands, suffered the same? His lover has not said much about what he has endured - enough to convey the boredom, the loneliness, the despair of the last ten years, but very little about the physical torments he has endured. There is no need - even were James not intimately acquainted with violence and its residue, he can read it on Thomas’ body.

It has been three months since he arrived in this place. In that time, he can count on the fingers of one hand the times he has seen Thomas smile at anyone other than himself. He can count on that same hand without reusing fingers the number of times either of them have slept through the night, and he suspects he would have to begin using an abacus to keep track of how many of the scars on Thomas’ skin have come from this hellhole.

James stabs at the soil with the hoe, mentally imagining it to be the downed forms of the men who have dared put their hands on Thomas to harm him, and then sighs. He cannot allow himself to become agitated about this - not yet. Not until they are ready. He closes his eyes and breathes out slowly.

He is going to fix this.

He is going to start with a clean, soft bed. Thomas has confessed to him in halting, hesitant tones that he has longed for his own bed in London all these years. He has missed the soft sheets. The equally soft pillow. He has missed softness, he says, and James hates - absolutely _hates_ that he has been deprived of it. And so, when they leave this place, a bed is going to be the first of many things that James is going to give back to him, whether by hook or by crook, as his grandfather would have put it. There will be pillows, and sheets that do not scratch, and clothing that is equally soft. He has seen Thomas fingering the shirt that James came here wearing - feeling the quality of the cloth. There is nothing soft in the clothing they wear here - he has seen the red marks on Thomas’ collar from the scratching of the coarse fabric, and felt the itch of it himself, growing worse the more they sweat under the hot northern Florida sun. The moment they leave this place - the very second, James swears he will see this clothing stripped from them both and burned, if it means they have to walk naked until they can find new clothing. He stops for a moment, struck by the sudden mental image, and he cannot help the smile that curves his lips.

“What on earth are you smirking about?” Thomas mutters, just loud enough for James to hear, and James darts a look upward at him.

He can read, too, what they have done to his lover’s soul. They have changed him. Whether by intent or through the sheer, grinding monotony of his captivity, they have beaten him down - he tries to hide it, but James can read that, too, in the way that he holds himself. It is in his voice when they speak. It is in his eyes - in the desperate, longing look in them when James promises to take him out of here - and in the shaking in his hands when he reaches forward for James’ own. It is in the way that he keeps his voice down out of habit, now, even where there are none to hear them and nothing in their conversation that is even remotely objectionable. He has been slowly, carefully trying to coax Thomas out of his shell over the past three months - and gradually, his lover is beginning to respond. There is a slight smile on his face right now, and for all that they are being watched, still, Thomas has not retreated to the dull, uncaring facade that James had been so horrified to see him withdraw behind the first few weeks of their shared captivity. It’s heartening to see - James will need him sharp for what is to come, and soon - so soon.

“A week,” he says, very quietly. “Half again that at the most, and then -”

And then, he will see them both free, and safe, and so help him Christ - they will be comfortable again. Thomas will be comfortable again. He will laugh and smile and argue with James again the way he used to. And perhaps - just perhaps -

He rakes his eyes up and down Thomas’ body, and sees his lover flush.

“Hush,” Thomas scolds, and James puts on his very most innocent expression.

“What?” he asks, and Thomas flashes him an exasperated expression.

“You know damn well what,” he mutters, and bends to his task again. After a moment, James hears Thomas’ attempts to hurry his own work along, so that they stand exactly next to one another in their separate rows. “Alright,” he says, tone nearly apologetic, “ _don’t_ hush. Have you managed to recruit Fleming?”

**************************************************

He can feel himself starting to be Thomas again, and it both exhilarates and frightens him.

He has not recognized himself in the mirror in a very long time. It is the first change he is going to make when they are free of this place, and the thought - the very idea of it - is a revelation to Thomas in and of itself. He is going to be free. The knowledge has been burning inside his chest for the past three months, and the longer he looks forward to it - the longer he thinks on the notion -

He is coming back to himself - slowly, but surely, with the promise of freedom in front of him. He may be imagining it, but he feels stronger, now - the work goes faster, the days feel shorter, and most importantly of all - he is curious again. He shows it now in the impatience with which he questions James, and he finds himself waiting, breathless, for the answer. And James -  

James looks up again, and meets Thomas’ eyes, and he could still nearly weep at the sight of those familiar green, purpose-filled eyes that look at Thomas as though he might just be the center of the world.

“He’s with us,” his lover confirms, and Thomas feels relief wash over him. Fleming is the last piece of the puzzle - the piece that will bring this place crashing down around Oglethorpe’s ears, and he finds that he cannot wait for that fateful day.

Still - there is much to be done. He must not give away the game - not yet, and so he restrains the exultant shout that wants to work its way out of him, and keeps at his work. Soon, he thinks - soon he and this dirt will part ways forever.

“I’d love to know how you managed it,” he murmurs after a second, the gentle scrape of dirt covering his words, and he hears James snort.

“Same way I held a pirate crew together the last ten years,” he answers wryly. “A bit of luck, a lot of skill - and the promise of gold waiting at the end of the whole endeavor.”

Thomas cannot help it - a grin makes its way to his face. James, he thinks fondly, is still brilliant. He always has been - he always will be, and Thomas could not be more ridiculously happy to be working with the man he loves toward a common goal again. They fit, the two of them - like two halves of the same whole, and he cannot imagine -

He cannot imagine James without someone to so closely mirror his own goals. Come to that - he simply cannot imagine the life that James has told him so much about. He scrapes the dirt, and feels the smile slide off his face as he contemplates that fact.

“What?” James asks, sensing his change in mood, and Thomas glances at him.

“I can scarcely imagine it,” he confesses. “The life you’ve led. I mean - I can, I just -” He wants to stop, wants to rake a hand through his hair, and yet he does not. He settles instead for shaking his head minutely. “I want -” he starts, and he cannot help but allow his hands to clench around the hoe. Thomas falls silent. The rage is rising in him again - the helpless, overpowering rage he has felt every second of every minute since James arrived and woke him to feeling again. It has been so long - too long, since Thomas was allowed to want things, and he wants to kill every last bastard that taught him that he does not deserve his own desires. He knows, too, that James wants the same. He cannot, though - not yet. Instead, he moves a fraction of an inch closer to Thomas, nudges him with his shoulder. The contact lasts for a fraction of an instant, no more, while their bodies are shielding them from the glance of the closest guards. It’s enough - it has to be enough, only for now, only for a little longer. It bolsters Thomas - he closes his eyes, and breathes deep, and then opens them again.

“Tell me,” James says quiet and reassuring, and Thomas turns blue eyes on him, serious and focused and determined himself.

“I want my _life_ back,” he says, and the words are truer than any he’s ever spoken in his life. “I want to be free of this damn place. I want a deck under my feet and a book in my hands, and I never want to touch another bloody _garden tool_ ever again.” The words are fierce, and together with the look on his face -

James gives him a look - one full of anger and pride and sympathy all in one look, and then he reaches across the row, grips Thomas’ arm, stopping him working for a moment. He turns to face him, and when he speaks, his voice is low and equally determined, the voice that has swayed men to his cause for years - the same voice with which, Thomas thinks, he had probably sworn to kill Thomas’ father when Miranda asked it of him.

“I’m taking you out of here,” James promises. “I swear. One more week - no more than that. One more.”

Thomas looks at him, and then swallows hard. His hands tremble on the hoe. It is a wonderful dream - one that just might soon be a reality and he wishes to believe in it so very much. He does believe it, he realizes - now, finally, when they are so close to truly achieving their goal.

“Where shall we go?” he asks, voice rough, and then -

Footsteps approach, and James steps away.

“McGraw,” a voice growls, and James turns toward the overseer who has come down his row all but unnoticed.

He does not answer - simply turns his gaze on the man, and Thomas sees the scowl that results. He does his best not to grin at it - they are afraid of James, some of them, and this one is most undoubtedly among that number, much though it irritates him to be so.

“Next row,” he says, gesturing with the cudgel he holds in his hand. “Hamilton -” He scowls, and Thomas feels himself bristle. He has not minded the complete lack of respect with which he has been addressed for years, but hearing it directed at James is different, somehow, and it makes him furious on his own behalf too, now. ”Mr. Oglethorpe would like to see you in the house. Go and clean up first - you’ve got a visitor.” He looks bewildered - and James looks as though he feels much the same. Thomas, though -

He is staring at the guards. He knows it, and yet -  

“A visitor?” he asks, and the guard scowls.

“A lady, so I’m told. I’m to wait ten minutes, no more, so you’d best hurry it up.”

The world, Thomas thinks, is welcome to stop throwing him surprises any day now. He is not certain he can stand another - the first has nearly knocked him off his feet, welcome - nay, longed for - as it has been. He turns to James and something of his thoughts must show on his face, because his lover’s eyes fill with a kind of agony, and he steps toward Thomas.

“It can’t be her,” he manages to rasp. “Thomas -”

Thomas does not have the chance to respond - not truly, because at that moment, one of the guards reaches out and pokes James in the side hard with his cudgel, and James turns to scowl at the overseer that’s just attempted to prod him along.

“Move,” the man says unnecessarily. James opens his mouth to speak - only to be preempted by Thomas.

“Wait,” he says, and then wonders at the word that has just come out of his own mouth.

The overseer looks as absolutely shocked at the simple word as Thomas feels.

“Wait,” Thomas repeats, a request, a plea, and he can feel his heart speed up further, his breath catch in his throat, because this - this is new and not all at the same time and he is not sure when he regained his ability to speak without leave but he thinks it may have happened the moment they proposed to take James out of his sight once more. It is the first time he recalls contradicting an order since he’s been here, certainly. “Whoever has come to see me -” Thomas continues, and then stops.

He has halted the guards, and now his traitor tongue simply does not wish to continue working. He has confessed, privately, to James, that he has not done much by way of talking in the past ten years - not to anyone, and he hesitates now, but this is important. They have talked about this - about Thomas’ reticence, and he has agreed that with James by his side, he might, just might be able to start to shed his silent, obedient shell. He must - and he will start now, today. He wets his lips and then tries to speak again.

“They will know me,” he says finally, the words sounding a bit more desperate than he had intended, “and so they will also know James. Please. If one of us must go, might not both of us?”

********************************************************

One day, James thinks, he is going to tell Thomas how very proud of him he is. One day, he is going to lavish his lover in all the fine things life has to offer if it is the last thing he does. He is going to dig up the cache he’d buried on Skeleton Island, they are going to move - and he is going to help Thomas to brush the remaining rust from his vocal chords so that he may debate at will the way he used, because this feels right and good, like Thomas has just reclaimed some part of himself. He is frightened, James knows - they have done too good a job of teaching him silence and obedience, but he is standing firm, and James could kiss him for that alone.

“Alright,” one of the guards says, and then turns to the other. “It can’t hurt,” he argues. “Oglethorpe allowed him here, he must know what he’s let himself in for.”

“We won’t be any trouble,” James assures them, and they look at him, skeptical. They’re right to doubt - James isn’t planning any trouble at the moment, but should the opportunity present itself, he cannot deny that he might take it. The plans, after all, are in place.

“Six years,” Thomas reminds them, and James brings his attention back to the conversation and away from his plans for rebellion. “Have I ever caused any more trouble than anyone here? Has James, in the three months he’s been here?” His lover’s voice is still quiet, but firm, and James thinks he may be the only one who has noticed that Thomas’ hands are trembling where they hang at his sides.

“He -” One of the guards starts, and James gives him a look, and he swallows hard.

“He’s a pirate,” one of them mutters, and James flashes him a scowl.

“I’m also a Cornishman and a former naval officer,” he points out. “If we’re going to discuss who and what I am until we run out of time and your employer grows impatient, we might as well discuss all the facts.” The sarcasm in his voice is thick, and he sees Thomas throw him a warning glance. The argument works, though - the two men look between them, and the one that seems to be in charge grimaces.

“Alright,” he repeats, and then gestures. “I want the pair of you washed and back here in ten minutes, understand?”

James nods curtly, and then turns to walk away, Thomas directly behind him.

“Do you have any idea what this is about?” Thomas asks after a moment, and James turns his head toward him.

“None,” he admits. He is not sure what this might be about, but he cannot help but hope - he cannot help but wonder -

“What are you thinking?” Thomas asks, and James shakes his head.

“It can’t be her,” he answers, and Thomas frowns.

“James - you told me yourself, Miranda is -” He stops short, and James stares, startled. Of course, he thinks dazedly. Of course Thomas would think of -

“Not her,” he croaks after a minute. “Shit - Thomas -” He stops, and passes a hand over his face, running it through his slowly lengthening hair. “Shit,” he repeats, and looks at Thomas, who looks suddenly chagrined.

“I’m sorry,” he says after a moment. “Of course you wouldn’t think - I don’t know why I thought it-”

James reaches out, and squeezes his lover’s shoulder, and they stand for a moment, looking at each other.

“Who did you think of?” Thomas asks after a moment, and they both try to pretend that they are not misty-eyed suddenly.

“Madi,” James confesses. “But it can’t be. She’s got an island to run - it can’t be.”

If not Madi though - who the hell is it?

************************************************************************

He is going to kill John Silver.

It is the one and only thing that crosses his mind from the first moment that he knows of Flint’s fate. He is going to split Silver from stem to stern, and post a sign with his head on a spike above it - an echo of Ned Lowe, and maybe if he does it enough times, people will stop. Maybe if he does it enough times, they’ll listen. If he does it enough -

Maybe they will finally get the fucking message about his opinion of goddamn, motherfucking sons of bitches who think it alright to commit atrocities against the people he cares about in his _fucking_ vicinity. Maybe they will finally hear what it is Charles Vane has to say about fucking slavery and the cowards who would use others against their will. It’s worth a try.

A slave camp. A fucking slave camp! The words reverberate in Charles’ mind as he stalks over the sand, his feet taking him toward the hut he knows Silver has been in all of today, hoping to find him there. A fucking slave plantation! Did the fuckers think he wouldn’t find out? That he wouldn’t kill them when he realized they had taken an ally of his - no. Screw that. A goddamn friend of his, one of the only men he knows who’s ever actually given a damn about choice and freedom, and enslaved him? He picks up his pace as he thinks about it further, feet striking the ground all the harder, scowl affixed to his face such that the way clears in front of him. A fucking slave! Silver and Rackham have done this, and they thought - _Jack_ had the nerve to think that Charles wouldn’t kill him for it?

“Everybody in this room had better clear out of it right fucking now if they don’t want to die.”

The words hang in the room for a second, suspended and spitting the lightning Charles feels as though he should have to accompany them at the moment. No one leaves - no one, it seems, can bring themselves to leave, and Charles finds that he doesn’t care.

“Fine. Stay,” he spits. “You should all hear what this piece of shit has done anyway.” He points to Silver, who turns.

“Captain Vane,” he says slowly, and then Charles is stalking across the room, lifting the fuck by the front of his coat.

“Beg,” he demands, and Silver coughs.

“For what?” he asks, and Charles shakes him.

“You know goddamn well what,” he growls. “You know what you fucking did. You know what I’m going to do to you in response, so beg, and maybe -”

“Shall I beg for your forgiveness?” Silver asks. “I’d say I’m unlikely to receive it. Or perhaps you’d like me to beg for my life? If so, you’ll be sorely disappointed there as well, as I seem to have recently made it unworth living, so perhaps you would do me the courtesy of -”

Charles shakes the bastard and in the process slams Silver’s head into the wall behind him, feeling a vicious thrill of satisfaction when the shorter man winces.

“Play the victim one more time, and I swear I will tear your guts out and feed them to you,” Charles says through clenched teeth. “The only victim here is the woman that just fucking told me what you’ve done. I don’t imagine she’ll be very willing to take me to task if your head parts ways with the rest of you, so maybe you’d like to make a full confession here and now and skip me ripping you apart instead of just killing you.” He shakes Silver again, and the smaller man’s head bobs back and forth, seeming almost disconnected from his neck, and oh, how Charles would like to make that idea a reality.

“Squeal!” he demands, and Silver opens his mouth.

“I -” he starts, and then a voice rings out from the doorway.

“Captain Vane!” Madi’s voice cuts through the haze, and he turns to face her.

“What?” he asks, and she does not move - she does not change her expression, and it is that that gets his attention.

“If you make him utter those words - if you do this - you will regret it. I promise you that much,” she says, and Charles clenches his teeth.

He has had enough of taking orders for a lifetime, and if this woman thinks she is going to be the one to give them to him - now, after all he has gone through - all the shit he’s sorted through in his head to get here -

“Do not do this,” she says, and he sneers.

“Why?” he asks, voice rough. “You think you can stop me? You may rule here, but if you think I’ll bow down like one of your subjects -”

“I have told you - I do not have subjects,” she snaps. “I am not giving you an order. You make him say those words, and every man, woman, and child on this island will be dead by morning,” she snaps, and Charles starts.

“What the fuck are you talking about?” he asks, and she leans forward a hair.

“Think,” she hisses. “You are not a stupid man. I know this much. You have shown me this much. Look at those around you.”

There is still a roaring sound in his head, but it is abating now. The tavern is silent - terribly silent, save for the sound of feet shuffling on the floor, and men breathing, and Madi’s hand closing on his arm.

“Look,” she urges.

He does not release Silver - does not move, but he does allow his gaze to travel the room.

“Maroons. Pirates. Ex-slaves,” he summarizes. “Men who know better than this. Women, too, some of them. Rebels, all, who would -”

He stops. Realization hits. Rebels. Rebels against the British Crown, represented here by the soldiers that have not yet left on their ship, and for so long he has gone without their presence but now -

There are no words for the howling frustration that rises in his chest, the hopeless rage - the sheer, maddening, galling horror of the situation he finds himself in.

“I cannot control those men if there is a riot here,” Hennessey says behind him, and just for a moment, Charles wants him dead too.

“You would see them massacred,” Charles says accusingly.

“I would be powerless to stop it,” Hennessey answers.  

He wants to punch the man. He wants to rage - wants to kill Silver and fuck the consequences, wants them to be wrong, wants -

It doesn’t matter what he wants, not to the people on this island. It can’t - it is as Madi says, and Charles hates too the bit of him that knows it and cares. They’ve done this at least partially in his name - in the name of freeing Charles from his bonds, and he wants to find Jack and shake the living shit out of him too, and he can’t do that any more than he can do what he came here to do.

“I want this fuck dead,” Charles says, and the words are a growl. “I can’t have that, can I?”

“This will not be solved with words,” Madi says softly. “Or through violence, although I understand the impulse toward it,” she finishes, and Silver gives her a betrayed look - one that is met with hard steel in her gaze, and Vane cannot help it - he grins just a bit. At least there’s no chance of Silver getting his hooks in there again. He steps back, slowly - releases Silver equally slowly. He cannot kill him. He can’t shout his crimes to the rooftops for all to hear, but he can do as Madi asks. That much is within his power. He can restrain himself.

“Well,” Silver says. “That was educational. Why don’t we all -”

Charles turns back around in a heartbeat, and the punch that lands on Silver’s jaw is a satisfying thing - Charles can feel it reverberate in his arm. He’ll be out for a while. There’ll be a bruise, maybe a broken bone, and it will have to do in place of what Charles wants, but it’s better than nothing. He stands, breathing hard but in some measure satiated at the sight of Silver lying prone on the ground, limbs splayed, out cold.

“Fuck you,” he mutters, and to his surprise, he hears Hennessey give a snort of approval. Madi rolls her eyes, then kneels down, checking Silver’s pulse. She stands again, and shakes her hand, as if to shake the lingering trace of him from it.

“He will live,” she pronounces. She looks down at Silver again, and Charles does not think he imagines the flash of satisfaction that travels over her face, or the brief look of approval she gives him.

“We’re gonna need a ship,” he says, and she looks at him again - looks at him properly, this time, her brown eyes wide.

“You would come with me?” she asks, and Charles thinks he might just be able to breathe again, because oh thank fuck, someone else intends to fucking _do something_ about this. She can see the gratitude that flashes through him - he is certain of it, but he doesn’t give a fuck, because finally something makes sense again.

“Unless you’ve got some kind of burning desire to stay here and watch them gloat now they’ve signed away all we fought for, yeah,” he answers. He’s stopped panting, now - stopped feeling as though the world is tearing away at the edges, and his voice sounds less like the growling thing it’s become since his release. Madi appears, too, as if she has found a steadier current - her eyes show it, as does the set of her mouth.

“None,” she answers firmly. She straightens, and looks away from Charles. “Admiral?”

Charles turns. The tension has gone out of the room somehow - the crowd has gone back to their grog, Silver is still lying on the floor - and the English Admiral is standing, watching both of them.

“If you imagine I am staying here while you rush to the rescue, you are mistaken,” the older man answers, and Charles frowns. He jerks his chin in Hennessey’s direction and turns his gaze to Madi.

“What the fuck does he have to do with it?”

“I am hardly going to explain while standing here,” the Admiral snaps, and Charles frowns. He has half a notion - he’s not stupid, but it’s been a long month, and he’s not certain. Still - this isn’t the time.

“We need to move swiftly,” Madi says, and Charles shelves the question for the moment. “Captain Vane - can you find us a way off this island?”

He takes a deep breath. The war is over. Teach is gone, Eleanor is gone, Jack has turned on him, but this remains -

Flint is not gone, and Charles has apparently developed a habit of saving the other man’s ass. He does not intend to break that habit now. He nods, and sees Madi smile at him.

“Good,” she says. “Let us go and rescue our friend.”

There might, he thinks, just possibly be something wrong with him, because he is about to go rescue James Flint from slavery with the help of a princess and an admiral of the English fleet, and he’s not quite certain but he thinks he may even have been sober when he agreed to do it.

*******************************************************

_Oglethorpe’s Plantation:_

They are led into a sitting room that is far nicer than any Thomas has seen in ten years.

It is a relatively small space, and yet he cannot help but remark at the difference between this and his small, cramped quarters in the barracks. He cannot help but wonder - will he ever occupy a space such as this again in his own right? And is that -?

His eyes are drawn away from the clock that sits in one corner of the room by the young woman who stands upon his arrival, her pale face composed but her wide eyes speaking to her shock.

“Uncle Thomas,” she says in voice that sounds as though it belongs to someone far too old to call him uncle, “and -” She draws in a breath sharply. “Mr. McGraw?”

James’ grip on Thomas’ arm grows tighter, and, much to Thomas’ surprise, his lover steps forward. There is absolute amazement on his face - much like Thomas’ own, because the girl in front of him is undoubtably, unbelievably -

“Abigail?”


	5. Chapter 5

Both men’s voices sound together, and Abigail Ashe cannot help but feel the urge to weep.

She is here. She is really, truly here, and she has reached her goal - against all odds, against the wishes of her late father, against the wishes of the man he had sent her to, against the warnings of her assigned companion, that hateful old hag, against the desires of the entire English government - she is here, and so are they. 

She stands, and takes a step closer, because she cannot quite accept the sight before her eyes when she is standing so far away. They are here - really, truly here, and she hardly remembers Lord Hamilton, but she recalls his voice - just a bit, just enough to recall that his laughter is a pleasant, light thing, his smiles quick, and she recalls the mischief they’d used to get up to together, only to be caught by a smiling Lady Hamilton and Abigail’s own mother, who could never resist either of them. There is little of that man in the one before her now - not in the bearded face that her uncle Thomas would never have tolerated or in the tanned skin or the hundred other details that mark him as changed, but still - this must certainly be him, for there at his side stands another man, more familiar, and now as inextricably connected to the Hamiltons in her mind as summer to daylight. 

“Abigail,” Mr. McGraw says, not a question this time but a statement, and she nods, unable to open her mouth, unable to speak. They - she - 

She flings herself forward much as she had done in Nassau, and this time it is not Lady Hamilton that catches her but that poor woman’s husbands, and Abigail wraps her arms around them both, because it has been almost a year but she finally, finally feels as if she is standing on solid ground. The sensation causes her to weep harder as the two men hold onto her equally fiercely, their arms wrapping around her and each other. She can feel one of them place a hand on the back of her head - Mr. McGraw, she thinks, and she does not dread it, not as she has the mere suggestion of touch from the men her father had sent her to - not as she has dreaded everything since Ned Lowe’s ship. She weeps, and is held, and hears the sounds of hushed voices around her as she pours out the sorrow of the past several months against their chests.

“Miss Ashe arrived this morning,” she hears Oglethorpe say, and feels her uncle Thomas’ arms tighten around her ever so slightly. 

“What do you intend to do?” Mr. McGraw asks, and she does not miss the hint of a threat in his voice. Oglethorpe does - Oglethorpe, she thinks, has missed a great many things, and she cannot be entirely ungrateful that it is so. Not when it has bought her this chance.

“Prior to your arrival, I had intended to ask the young lady how it is that she has come to be aware that Mr. Hamilton is here. It is not precisely common knowledge, and -”

“His title is still Lord Hamilton, or was my father wrong in stating that Lord Ashbourne had not, in fact, had the chance to disinherit his eldest son before his death?” 

She might, she thinks, recognize her own voice again one day - or perhaps this calm, collected, ruthless stranger too like her father in tone for comfort is her now. She certainly seems to have become like him in her ability to unsettle and threaten with a few words, if not in her possession of a fully functioning conscience. Oglethorpe, for example, seems to be of the opinion that she has just told him that she is going to murder him and his entire household, judging by the look on his pale, oddly proportioned face. She extricates herself from the arms of the men she’s come to rescue, even as she calculates her next words, and speaks clearly and concisely.

“I am here,” she says, “as my father’s only living heir. Like Lord Hamilton’s sire, my father, it seems, left me a large inheritance and the freedom to execute his estate as I see fit given I am not married. That estate included his letters - which revealed this place and what he had done to you, Uncle. I am most terribly sorry for his actions and the pain they have wrought. Your lady wife explained part of it to me - as much as she felt she could.” 

Uncle Thomas, she thinks, looks as startled as if she had just struck him.

“What?” he asks, and she sees Mr. McGraw’s hand reach for his - sees, out of the corner of her eye, Uncle Thomas’ hand squeeze his in response, and she sees Oglethorpe grimace, which is why her next sentence brings her such joy.

“I have come,” she says, “to see both my uncle and Mr. McGraw set free of this place, and I do not expect any objections, because I have no doubt that were anyone to look closely at this place, they would find something for every noble heir in England to be most urgently concerned with. How many of their number, do you expect, might be inclined to see you hanged so as to set an example to their parents and secure their place in society against opportunistic younger siblings?” 

Oglethorpe has gone, if possible, even more pale.

“Miss Ashe -” he starts, and she shakes her head.

“No,” she says. “I did not come for a debate. You cannot keep me here, nor can you kill me, as my remaining family will most certainly object strenuously, and I rather think that Mr. McGraw and Lord Hamilton might do you harm if you were to try. I will be staying for three days so that I might recover from the journey. I would greatly appreciate if Lord Hamilton and Mr. McGraw might be given accommodation in the house and some measure of comfort to prepare them for travel.”

“Miss Ashe -”

She does not answer - merely fixes him with a look, and she can see Mr. McGraw’s mouth twitch with what she thinks might actually be amusement. Uncle Thomas, too, appears to have regained himself somewhat from the shock of her appearance and that given by her words.

“You may wish to do as she asks,” he says, and Abigail does not think she is imagining the bright smile she spots under his beard or the defiant joy in his voice, which is just as she remembers it, or the shock on Oglethorpe’s face as he, too, sees and hears it.

“It appears I have little choice,” he answers, and Abigail attempts to give him a pleased smile. He will expect it - as far as he is concerned, she has just gotten everything that she has come here for.

“Excellent,” she says, and keeps her thoughts to herself for now. Her true mission here has not begun, but this is the first step toward it, and she is pleased with how it has proceeded. “I should like to retire - I shall see everyone for dinner, I’m sure.” 

*******************************************************************

_ One Hour Later: _

This morning, Thomas had thought he could help lead a revolt.

This afternoon, sitting in a plushly appointed room in Oglethorpe’s mansion, clean and properly dressed and actually clean-shaven for the first time in years, Thomas wonders if he can do any such thing, because he cannot seem to stop shaking at the events of the hour prior. If he cannot process what has just happened, how in the hell is he meant to help James effect a rebellion in this place?  

God help him, he is not certain he can even focus on the thought of a rebellion when what is pounding through his head as if to a marching beat is the thought that he is free.

He is a free man.

They are both free men, as of this moment, and Thomas has no idea - not the slightest - of what to do with it. He could get up from here, at this moment, and walk about the house. He could, in theory, go to Oglethorpe’s library and read, or simply sit here as he is doing now and contemplate the calluses on his hands and no one -  _ no one _ \- is going to - no one will -

“Thomas.” 

He looks up at James from where he sits on the bed and realizes that his breath has been coming in hitched gasps for several minutes, and his lover is looking down at him with concern. 

“The bed is soft,” Thomas manages to say after a moment. The words are nonsense - they explain nothing, but somehow James seems to understand, because he simply sinks down onto the bed beside Thomas.

“Yes it is,” he answers, and wraps one arm around Thomas’ shoulders. He does not speak further - only holds Thomas while he fights to breathe, to speak, to find a thought beyond -

Someone has come for him, finally.

He had thought, when James appeared, that he was dreaming. To some extent, he realizes, the past three months have still felt like a dream - a long, wonderful dream, wherein Thomas has his lover back. Where James has come for him, and Thomas can feel again - a dream where life becomes worth the living, and surely it must have been? It is only in dreams that Thomas is allowed to feel the way he has felt these past months. He is certainly not permitted to feel as if his heart might leap out of his chest with joy, or to clench a hoe so hard out of fury that he can feel the wood begin to protest. He is not permitted these things - 

And yet here, now, is Abigail Ashe, another ghost of his past, but one he could not have conjured up as a fevered delusion any more than he could have James with his shaven head and earring and tattoo. It is a strange realization to have, but it has taken Abigail’s arrival and sudden, forceful rescue for him to realize -

He is  _ not  _ dreaming. He is not having an extended hallucination, the emotions he has been feeling are real, and he is not - has never been - forgotten. He has not been abandoned - not by either family or friends, not entirely, and here, sitting in this room, it comes home to him at last. They have come for him. He is saved.

His eyes are damp, he realizes, and reaches up to swipe at the tears with one hand, furious at himself and relieved in equal measure. He feels as though he has spent the last three months weeping more than he has done in his entire life prior, with the exception of the years he is not contemplating if he does not have to. He has resolved to have less of this - it has been three months, and yet every time he thinks he is done, he finds a fresh well of tears to shed. Still - he cannot help feeling a spike of relief even while he attempts to dry his eyes now. He has wondered too often over the years whether he is still capable of crying. There have been years on the plantation when he has thought, surely - surely there  _ must  _ be something he can feel that is not resignation. Anger, fear, grief - something, and now he is gratified to find that he is, in fact, still capable of such feelings. He is still capable of crying - still human, moreso now than he has been in years, and it feels like a blessed release of the worry that has nagged at him. 

James does not speak. He has learned over the past few months, that Thomas will tell him what troubles him if he is up to it - they have fallen into a comfortable pattern, the two of them, and Thomas cannot help but be grateful for the patient silence.

“Abigail has grown,” Thomas says at last, when he has composed himself a bit. He will explain to James later what it is that has brought him to relieved, overwhelmed tears, but for now -

One of the many things Thomas has appreciated so very much since James arrived is the urgent immediacy he brings with him. There is nothing lazy about James McGraw - nothing of the timeless haze that pervades this place. He is alive - still blessedly, wonderfully unwilling to submit, and he brings with him the spark of life that Thomas feels as if he has long since forgotten. 

James has plans. James has wonderful, seemingly impossible plans, and Thomas can feel his heart leap at the thought of them. He speaks, and Thomas feels suddenly as if he can think again - can breathe again after so long. He finds himself chiming in, adding to James’ plans as if he has not been stagnating here for years, can feel again the heady thrill of accomplishment - of making strides toward a definite end goal. 

They have made such strides toward their freedom. There are men in this place waiting on James’ or Thomas’ orders to begin breaking this place in two. There are men on the outside - people Thomas himself has contacted, writing his name for the first time in a decade on a letter hastily smuggled out by a guard - waiting to shelter them when they have escaped. There is a world outside this plantation that they have planned to rejoin, and those plans have just been upended by a certain Miss Abigail Ashe. 

“If I hadn’t seen her for myself, I might not have believed how much she’s changed,” James replies. He rubs a hand over his face, fingers tracing over his beard and mustache in a gesture that Thomas is well familiar with on himself but is still adjusting to in James. “The last time I saw Abigail, she looked as though she thought I might throw her over the side at the least, and now-”

“Now, Mr. McGraw, I am here to assist you by creating the distraction you will need to successfully foment rebellion in this place.”

Had they been standing, Thomas thinks, both of them might have fallen over, so unexpected is the sound of Abigail’s voice coming from the open second-story window. Instead, both men turn, James coming to his feet in an instant, and they gape at the girl, red-cheeked with exertion, who stands behind them with a serious expression on her face.

“It is  _ your  _ rebellion, is it not?” she asks. “It was Uncle Thomas’ name on the letter to your contact that brought me here. I saw it and I knew I had to come - I couldn’t allow you to remain here any longer.”

“Remain here?” James asks, and Abigail turns her gaze to him.

“The situation has changed,” she tells him. “We have three days, no more. Your men will not find a safe harbor if they cannot be gone from here in that time.” 

*******************************************************************

_ The Maroons’ Island: _

“Hurry up,” Vane hisses, and Madi looks up.

“Captain Flint will need his things,” she says calmly. “As I require mine.” She pulls the drawstring shut on a bag that she has packed, and Vane snorts.

“Flint needs us to move our asses,” he answers, and Madi shoots him a quelling look.

“Do you not think he has lost enough?” she asks, and Vane has the good grace to look momentarily abashed.

“Five minutes,” he warns, and ducks out of the hut, leaving Madi and Hennessey within.

She is moving with swift economy, Hennessey notes - her things are in one bag, and James’ are being packed, neatly and carefully, into another.

“You do not expect to return,” Hennessey observes - and Madi winces.

She shifts, and straightens the fabric of the skirt she is wearing - a nervous gesture, perhaps, or merely one meant to grant her the time to formulate an answer. He waits, and after a moment she speaks again.

“I am leaving,” she says simply after a moment. “Whether I return will depend on many things.” 

He has known many politicians. Many lords, and many members of parliament, and officers under his own command, all of whom have had a fine grasp of the art of speaking much while saying little. The young woman in front of him has a breath-taking grasp of doing exactly the opposite, it seems; there is a refreshing silence to her that still speaks volumes. As, he thinks, do the items she is packing.

She has grown up here. She said it to Hennessey so very recently - this is  _ her island,  _ inasmuch as she knows every path, every cliff, every family living in her camp _.  _  This is her home - and yet as Hennessey sits there, he watches her pack for James what she has just done for herself moments before. The remnants of a life - the most important parts, clothing and mementos, things which may not be replaced. He recalls the look on her face as she had joined him outside her family’s complex of rooms - he recalls the pain there. This is her home, and she is being driven from it as much as she is leaving of her own free will, for her people cannot withstand a division at this crucial juncture, and Madi’s presence most definitely represents that very thing. She knows it, as he does.

“If,” he says slowly, carefully, “-if the transition occurs smoothly, it will not be difficult for you to find your place here again.” 

Madi stops, and looks up at him.

“I have seen the looks in their eyes,” she answers. “If it were you - would you stay while each person you pass wonders who you will now marry? Who among the other camps will be named partner in defending this new kingdom? They will all want to be the one. They will all hate their rivals, and they will all resent me if I choose them. They will all expect an alliance, and if none is chosen -”

“Then your borders will remain indefensible, unless you take the most distasteful option available to you and marry the one who did this,” Hennessey answers, and Madi nods, shortly, tersely. 

“Yes,” she answers. “I am leaving. My mother is in mourning - there are none who will expect her to marry. She will make alliances another way. There will be no fighting among ourselves - not because of me.”

_ And no heir to the throne,  _ Hennessey does not say. No disgraced princess, mourning the loss of her ambitions and her freedom. 

“Your mother did not seem - overly hostile to your arguments,” he observes, and Madi closes her eyes for a moment.

“No,” she answers, and takes a deep breath. “I may be certain of that, at least. My mother loves me, whatever may occur. She may thank me for leaving at this moment, however.” 

The words feel like a hammer strike.

His mouth is suddenly dry as cotton. His hands shake, his head swims -

It is, Hennessey thinks, ten years too late to do anything. It is ten years too late to remedy his mistake, and yet - 

_ He had gone to visit James’ small apartment the day after his son’s exile. The place was silent - the room untouched, as if James himself might walk back in any second, and Hennessey had - Hennessey had -  _

_ They had found him two days later, still sitting in the remains of his son’s life, a blank expression on his face. He had not spoken a word when addressed - merely stood, and walked downstairs, and calmly asked the landlady if he could pay for another month’s rent. He had then walked down the street to the tavern to get well and properly pissed, and the room had remained untouched for another two months before Hennessey had finally felt up to the task of clearing it. _

He gets hold of himself with a shake of his head. He is not in London. He has come here to put away the man he became after James’ exile, and this is not the time to allow himself the luxury of sorrow. James is counting on him  _ now -  _ right bloody now, to save him, and Hennessey will not fail this time. Still -

The Maroon Queen is not here, but Hennessey is, and he can speak the words she cannot.

“She will not celebrate your departure.” The words come out strangled - choked and odd sounding, and still, Madi turns to him, eyebrows furrowed. It takes her only a moment - her face smooths in understanding, and she stops packing for a moment.

“I know,” she says softly. “She will mourn. I meant only that my absence may benefit her right now.”

Hennessey closes his eyes.

“I am certain,” he says, “that she would be grateful to hear you say as much.” He does not open his eyes again - he cannot, not with the tears that are threatening to rise in them, and damn the drink anyway for making him more susceptible to the damn things than usual. 

“You did not leave Captain Flint with the same understanding?” Madi asks after a moment. She does not comment further, and Hennessey shakes his head again. 

“No,” he answers thickly. “I did not.”

Silence reigns between them for a moment. Hennessey stands, still, in the same spot, staring at- he knows not what. He is here again, he realizes - the remains of James’ life lie around him, and the man himself - the boy he raised - is -

He sits heavily, and Madi reaches out after a moment. She hesitates, and then her hand makes contact with his. 

“He lives,” Madi reassures him, and he turns to her. “You will make amends,” she adds, and Hennessey closes his eyes.

“You cannot be certain,” he answers, and she frowns. 

“I can,” she answers. “I am. Captain Flint is strong - he has courage. I have never known a braver Englishman.” 

“Or one more stubborn,” a voice says from the doorway. “Man would argue with God himself if he exists. If we’re going, it has to be now.” Vane looks at them. He has found a sword somewhere, Hennessey sees, and a pistol too, and somehow he looks more complete, now - less as though he were missing some essential bit of himself. They rise. 

“I am ready,” Madi answers, and Vane nods. 

“We’re still bringing him, huh?” he asks, and then snorts. “Alright. I’ve found us a ship. Come on.”

*****************************************

“I suppose,” Hennessey says under his breath as they approach the beach, “that you have found us an actual ship, not a derelict? And a crew?” 

There is a look on the former admiral’s face that Madi cannot help but imagine is related to their current surroundings - or perhaps, she thinks, to the loss of his hat and wig, both of which she had insisted he remove before they embarked on this journey. They currently reside among Flint’s things in the sack that Hennessey has insisted upon carrying, and she cannot help but allow one corner of her mouth to turn upward at the memory of Vane’s eyes rolling upward at Hennessey’s insistence upon retaining the items.  

The two men are working together for the time being. That does not mean they are happy about it.

Vane shoots him a glare over his shoulder. 

“I said I’d find us a ship,” he growls. “Don’t think I didn’t consider taking yours. Remind me again why I had to waste a favor getting us another?”

“I am serving here as a liaison, not a naval officer!” Hennessey snaps. “I have no authority to -”

“Quiet,” Madi hisses, and Vane turns his attention back to the forest they are currently sneaking their way through. 

Vane has found a ship. That does not mean that reaching it is going to be easy. Night has fallen on the island, and while Madi knows the location of the many traps in the forest-

“Stop,” she murmurs, and Vane freezes. She reaches forward, and pulls him to the side, and he allows her to do so, presumably because he’s never had any desire to die impaled in a pit full of sharpened stakes.

“Thanks,” he grunts, and she simply nods. They have agreed to leave quietly - there is no escort, not for this, and they need to be silent. 

The night is dark, and Madi finds herself grateful for that much, at least. The moon does not shine through the trees - not tonight. The wind blows, warmer now than it was when this began months ago, and strong, and Madi cannot help but feel chilled to the bone despite the warmth of the breeze. The wind is blowing her out to sea, she thinks - blowing her away from her island, and it is a good thing that there is someone with a ship and a crew ready to receive her. She cannot stay - the very fact that she is sneaking through her own forest is proof of that. 

She is acutely aware of the danger they face. There are sentries here - not many, but enough, and Madi has, of late, had cause to question how many of her own guards no longer answer only to her and her mother but to Julius - or worse yet, to Silver. It is best if they do not attract attention - she cannot imagine that the latter will react well to finding that while he may be willing to remain in perpetuity, Madi is unwilling to bear his presence so much as one more day. And the former -

She only just stops in time.

She does not speak - she cannot. She holds out a hand, unthinking, in a gesture she has used all of her life, and by some miracle, the men behind her understand - they must, for they cease all activity immediately, even, in Vane’s case, breathing for a second, as though whatever lies ahead might hear him. She is not certain he is wrong. 

She has walked this trail many times over the years, and never once has there been a trap here before. Now, though - now one yawns in front of her, and it may be one that her people have laid in the time that she was a captive. It may be, and yet -

She spots her folly a moment before the true trap springs, and they do not have the time to move. 

A pistol clicks next to her head.

“We can do this the easy way,” the voice of Israel Hands says, too close, “or the hard one.”


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ok. I know it's been a while, and I apologize for that, but in my defense, I should be hibernating.

_ “I still say,” someone says at Jack’s elbow, “that the treaty is wrong.”  _

_ He is sitting in the meeting hall - not the dining hall, because Charles is there, and Charles - _

_ He lays his head down on the table. Anne is in Philadelphia with Max. Max, God help him, would be a welcome sight just now - and that IS saying something, because he is absolutely certain she would be telling him to stop crying over spilt milk. _

_ What, he wonders, has happened to his conviction? Where now is the grim resolution that has seen him through this - the determination that has led him to this point?  _

_ “We don’t have a choice,” another, more heavily accented voice says, and Jack does his level best to block them both out. He is here to be miserable - he does not have the time for politics, or the enthusiasm, or - _

_ “Princess Madi thinks the same,” the first voice says. “You saw her. You saw her leave. She will not sign their treaty, because it is wrong. She knows -” _

_ “She will not have a choice either! They will force her to sign.” _

_ “There is always a choice.” The first voice lowers. “Princess Madi knows better than to placate these white men. She would not do so, and neither will I. I would die first.” _

_ “You may do so by yourself,” the second voice snaps. “And she will too, unless she does as the Queen says. She is in bed with Silver - the whole island knows it! They will reconcile - you will see!” _

_ Can they not be quiet? Jack turns, a rebuke on his lips - and stops. _

_ Charles Vane is moving through the back of the hall, and he does not look like the drunken, devastated mess of just an hour before. There is a focus to his movements - determination, and purpose, and it is all bent on Silver, who is standing about twenty feet behind Jack. Jack stands. Something is afoot - he is not sure what, but something, and if Charles has managed to pull himself together, there must be a reason - _

_ Ten minutes later, Silver lies on the floor, and Jack watches Madi, Vane, and their English ally leave the hall, and wonders how in the hell he has not seen this coming. _

_ He should have done. He knows how Charles Vane processes grief. He is grinning, he realizes - he has missed this. _

_ He leans forward, and slaps Silver’s face lightly - then stands back as the shorter man shakes himself awake, his hand reaching for the pistol at his belt. _

_ “Rise and shine,” he says. “Unless you wish to remain there. Understandable, I suppose - that must smart -” _

_ Silver heaves himself to his foot, somehow, and Jack stands back. _

_ “They’re going for Flint,” Silver says, and begins to head for the door. “They’re going to find him, and start this all again -” _

_ Israel Hands steps through the door, and Silver’s gaze fixes on him. _

_ “Fine time for you to show up,” he snaps. “We have a problem.” _

_ Hands’ eyes go to Silver’s face, and the bruise that is forming there. His eyes narrow. _

_ “Vane?” he asks, and Silver glares. _

_ “He intends to go and find Flint,” he says. “Stop him. I’m going to go and make certain he doesn’t find any support on this island.” _

_ He starts through the door, his crutch thumping against the floor. He is scowling, still - thunderously so, and the crowd parts before him.  _

_ “And the girl?” Hands rumbles. Silver looks stricken for a moment.  _

_ “She’s not to be harmed,” he insists. “If she’s given time, she’ll see this can’t continue. Until then-”  _

_ He passes a hand over his face.  _

_ “She’s needed here,” he says. “He’s not. She’ll see that. Go.” _

_ “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”  _

_ Jack is across the room, somehow. He does not recall getting to his feet. He does not recall reaching out to grip Silver’s arm, either, and yet he is doing that as well, and shaking the man by the forearm like a rat terrier with a prize in the process. He does not recognize whatever it is in himself that has brought him to this point, but he thinks he might last have seen it the night he murdered Anne’s former husband.  _

_ Hands does not move toward him - possibly because he does not consider Jack a threat. It’s a mistake Jack has always counted upon - and most often been right. He meets Silver’s eyes, and sees the anger on the other man’s face. _

_ “Your former captain is about to sabotage all we’ve done here,” he snaps. “You’ll forgive me if I don’t feel any particular need to ensure he survives this night, given what’s at stake.” _

_ “And you’ll forgive  _ _ me _ _ if I ask why the hell you think I’ve done any of this at all, if not to see Charles returned safely,” Jack snaps.  _

_ “I believe Max would disagree,” Silver snaps, and Jack -  _

_ Jack does not recall walking away, any more than he recalls walking toward Silver in the first place, but he is reasonably certain that Silver is on the floor behind him when he does so, knocked out for the second time that night. With any luck, it will allow him to reach the men he needs to speak to - if Charles is leaving, he will need a crew, and if he recruits one, then Silver will undoubtedly find out about it. He cannot, however, be in two places at once - a replacement crew is needed, and quickly. Jack Rackham is many things - and respected, fortunately, is now one of them. _

_ “Tell me,” he asks the first pirate he speaks to, “who is it you think is the loudest blowhard on this island and thinks the treaty’s so much refuse?” A blank look, and then -  _

_ “ _ _ Not _ _ Captain Vane,” he specifies. The pirate’s face lights up. _

_ “That’d be Cap’n Ashton,” he answers. Jack nods.  _

_ “I see. Anyone else?”  _

_ The pirate thinks for a moment.  _

_ “Cap’n Bowen,” he answers. “Says he seen the same thing in Madagascar and it were shit there, too.”  _

_ “Good God,” Jack says. “Bowen? I thought he’d died.” _

_ The pirate shakes his head. _

_ “He’s camped near the northern bluff,” he answers, and Jack shakes his head. _

_ “My thanks - here.” He hands the man a small handful of coin. Charles will go to Ashton, and Jack will go to Bowen, and between them, there may, just may, be one whole, functioning ship and crew available for use. _

**********************************************************************

When this is over, Charles thinks to himself, he’s going to sleep for two days. Maybe three, if he can manage it.

So far today, he’s been dragged out of a ship by English troops, been betrayed by his best friend, punched quite a few people, including the so-called Pirate King, and in all that time, he’s eaten perhaps once and now there is a gun pointed at the head of a woman that Charles thinks he is actually beginning to admire. She’s a lot better than the fucks he’s running from, at any rate, and now she’s in danger, and the bastard holding her captive -

He wonders if there’s enough grog in the world for him to start sorting through the short-lived, inexplicable frisson of something strongly resembling relief that goes through him at the sight of Israel Hands. He wonders if he even wants to - or if there’ll be any need once this is over. Somehow he doubts it - not judging by the look on Madi’s face, and the fury that Charles feels filling him at seeing her held at gunpoint by one of his own personal demons. This is not her fight. This has never been her fight, and Charles will wonder later why it is that he’s angry that she’s been brought into this, but for now, he’s staring at a ghost from his past and pissed as hell at the sight.

“Teach should have killed you,” he growls, and Hands turns toward him, feral eyes tracking his movements. He’s got one that’s got a truly wicked scar surrounding it, and that side - Charles might be able to get a hit in there, if he’s lucky, surely?

Not bloody likely, Charles thinks, dismissing it. If Teach shot him in that side and still couldn’t kill him, then Charles had best bet that there’s no weakness to be exploited there.

There is a look in Israel Hands’ eyes that promises death, and Charles cannot help but think that the man who’d claimed Charles his son in sentiment if not in blood should have checked his kill that day. He wonders if Teach knew.

“Captain Vane,” Madi says in a level tone. “Go. Get as far away from here as you can. Captain Flint -”

“Shut up,” Hands snarls, and presses the gun to her temple. “You’re not going for bloody Flint, none of you. War’s over, and I’m making sure it stays over. If I have to kill somebody to make it so, you mark my words, I’ll do it.”

Hennessey’s hand is going for a gun, and Vane stills it with one look.

“He means it,” he murmurs. He stands, looking at Hands for a moment, and Hands’ eyes narrow.

“The one who pulls your puppet strings,” Madi says, drawing his attention once more. “Does he know you are here?”

Hands gives her a moment’s glance.

“You’re wondering if your man’ll come for you?” he asks, and Charles can see her fists clench at her sides.

“I am wondering if I must order one man executed when this is over, or two,” she answers, and Hands laughs darkly.

“Planning on talking to God like that, too, if I end up sending you to meet him, I’ll bet,” he says, and then turns again, fast as a whip, toward Charles. He is still pointing the gun at Madi’s head, and it’s no good - he has not been distracted for long enough, and Charles curses internally.

“You think you can put me down?” Hands asks softly, and gestures with his chin to the sword in Charles’ hand. “You think Teach shot me instead of letting us fight it out ourselves because he knew you could take me? That he wanted to spare you the trouble? What was it he used to say?”

He’s blustering, Charles thinks. He doesn’t recall Hands being much of one for talking in the past - so what the fuck does he think he’s doing now? Seventeen-year-old Charles might have fallen for the bait, but now -

For fuck’s sake, he doesn’t think Charles is going to fall for it now, does he? If he does, then he’s an even bigger idiot than Charles has always taken him for, and if he’s really such a damn fool - ha. Two can play that game.

“He said that strife makes a man strong,” Charles snarls. “And he believed it. Ever think he left you alive so I could finish you off myself?”  

He can see the doubt flicker through Hands’ eyes just for a moment.

“Had much strife the last ten years, Israel?” he asks.

Madi’s caught onto his game. He can see her gaze dart between the gun at her head and him, and he can’t nod, the crafty bastard beside her will see, but he thinks she understands what he’s about. Eleanor would have. Eleanor had had cunning and opportunism embedded in her very bones, and he has to hope that the woman who grew up with her has also learned those lessons. Her life depends on it.

Only one way to find out, he thinks, watching the other man. Only one way to know -

“You know too fucking well where I’ve been the last ten years,” Hands snarls. “You and your whore, you helped put me there -”

“You’re a fucking shit stain and Teach knew it,” Charles goads, bolder now. Simple distraction is not going to work - but this might. This has to, and so he pulls out all the stops - the fucker deserves it for bringing Eleanor into this. “You think killing her is going to bring him back?” he asks. He does not have to name the man he speaks of - Hands knows all too well. Teach has cast a long shadow - longer, it seems, than Charles had realized. “Think it’s going to change the fact that he never gave a fuck what happened to you but he died trying to save me? I was his son, and you were his fucking leavings.”

There is a look of rage on Hands’ face, now, and Charles would almost feel sorry for him, if he just weren’t such a piece of shit.

“You were the one turned on him,” Hands snaps. “You, not me, jumped up little bastard that you were and Teach thought you could do no wrong. I tried to tell him - tried to warn him, and you -”

Hands is all but foaming at the mouth now, and Charles abruptly wonders if this - this pitiful specter of a man has been longing to say this to him all these years. He probably has. _He’s probably,_ whispers a part of Charles, _got a point._

The ache in his chest can fuck off, because he hasn’t got time for it right now, and he shoves it aside.

“Think he could see even then that you were a traitorous sack of shit just stupid enough to follow another one just like you now?” Charles asks with a vicious grin and Hands -

Hands falls for it. With a growl of rage, he takes a step away from Madi, and she does not need another opening. She lashes out with the dagger she has been drawing for the past two minutes, aiming right at Hands’ eye. He howls in agony, and stumbles, clutching at it, and Charles dives forward, sword raised, before Hands can regain control of the situation.

Yes, he thinks - Hands is still a fucking fool, and Charles might be too but at least he’s learnt a few new tricks.

It’s over in a matter of minutes. Maybe anger has made Hands stupid. Maybe Madi’s finally managed to do the old berserker some serious damage - or maybe Charles is just younger and faster.

“Fucking little shit -!” Hands roars. He lurches forward, axe raised. Charles feints, goes for the bad side - and then Charles is hitting him, hammering at him with the hilt of his sword, punching him in the bad eye, and Hands may be hitting him but Charles doesn’t feel it - not until the other man falls to the ground, until the roars of fury turn to cries of pain, until he can no longer hear Teach’s voice in his ear goading him on - until he can no longer see the other man’s face as he turns away from him on a beach now hundreds of miles away. Until the coat Hands has no doubt bought with money from the sale of one of Charles’ friends is soaked with Hands’ blood, until Charles aches with the effort of continuing, his wounds screaming at him, until -

Until the moment he stops, sinking to his knees in the dirt, confused as all hell at the realization that he cannot bring himself to strike a fatal blow, or he would have done so by now. He has spent the last five minutes pounding the fucker into dust, and yet -

Eleanor is dead. Jack has betrayed him. Anne is nowhere to be found. Hornigold is dead, and Flint is in chains somewhere - _Teach is gone_. There is only them left, and Charles cannot bring himself to snuff out the last spark of the life he has known until now. He cannot do it.

He stands in one movement and stumbles away from Hands to be sick in the bushes next to him, and when he straightens again, he looks at Madi and at Hennessey, and wonders what the fuck is happening to him - what the fuck has been done to him in the last few months, exactly that he cannot kill the piece of shit in front of him.

*********************************************************************

The clearing has gone quiet again, save for the sounds of panting breath and Israel Hands groaning in pain, and Hennessey is suddenly grateful that he was prevented from fighting Charles Vane. He has the uncomfortable feeling that he might now be rotting at the foot of a dung heap and James out a rescuer.

At the moment, however, Vane is knelt in front of him, looking somehow lost, and Hennessey is not quite certain what is going through his head.

“Captain Vane?” Madi asks, her voice quiet, and Vane closes his eyes.

“It’s your island,” Vane says roughly. “Your people he fucked.” He is looking up at her, still a bit green around the edges from nausea, and perhaps that is all this is. Pain will do strange things, and Charles Vane is most definitely in a great deal of it at the moment. Still - Hennessey does not understand why it should also make him hesitate, not in this.

“What in God’s name are you waiting for?” Hennessey hisses, and Vane looks up at him. Just for a moment - just a bare second - Hennessey imagines that he might see something in the other man’s eyes that has nothing to do with anger or derision. Then it’s gone, and Vane is looking down at Hands, who lies on the ground, blood covering his face, curled as if to protect himself from Vane’s onslaught. The younger man looks back up at Hennessey, still breathing hard. He pushes himself to his feet, and takes a step away from the downed man and toward Madi.

“ _Your_ island,” he repeats. He holds out the sword, and to Madi’s credit, she steps forward without hesitation. She takes it from his hand, fingers brushing against his, and Hennessey suddenly understands.

This is her island. It is her justice to be meted out, as long as they still stand on ground that is hers. It is a fine gesture, even if it is perhaps also an excuse.

Madi’s hand shakes around the sword, and Hennessey frowns.

“Are you well?” he asks, and she nods.

“I am fine,” she answers. “Captain Vane - if you would step away -”

She is not well - she is far from it, as close to death as she has come today. Her hands are shaking, and there is a look in the young woman’s eyes that says that she has had enough - enough of men threatening her, enough of peril and treachery, and he can hardly blame her. They will do well to get away from this island, he thinks grimly. There is nothing for any of them here -

Hennessey hears Hands begin to rise long before he sees the figure out of the corner of his eye. The man has the time to take two steps - two running steps toward Vane, and he turns, eyes widening, as Hands comes toward him with a roar. He dodges the first downstroke, eyes casting about desperately. He cannot win this - not in his condition, not without a weapon -

He has none but Hennessey does. His hands have not forgotten how to load in a hurry, nor his body the motions to aim. Madi takes a step forward, sword in hand, alarmed cry on her lips - and then Hennessey fires and the berserker falls dead, a look of surprise on his bearded face.

Vane stands, and looks between them, and then blinks and swallows hard. He is alive, and Hands is not, and he looks as if he is not certain how to process that information.

“Make sure he’s dead this time,” he rasps, and Hennessey nods. He kneels by the corpse, and then stands again.

“Dead,” he confirms. Vane appears to still be in the process of checking for gunshot wounds on himself, worried perhaps that the shot will have gone through Hands and ricocheted to find another home, and, finding none, he turns his gaze to Hennessey. He nods - gratitude, Hennessey thinks, mingled with shock, and then looks to Madi.

“Next slaving bastard’s yours,” Vane promises, still sounding a bit dazed. She nods - and then looks to the trees, and listens, and her expression grows grim.

“We must leave,” she says. “Quickly. Follow, and do not speak until we come to the beach.”

They leave, swiftly and as quietly as they may, while the sounds of whistling alerts and shouting head their way.

**************************************************************

He is going to die.

It is not just a possibility this time - it is a certainty. Behind him, John Bowen is roaring defiance, and Silver -

Silver is there and Jack does not know how the uncanny bastard manages to do it, but somehow he has managed to find them. It must be Ashton’s quartermaster, he thinks - or Bowen’s. One of them has talked with Silver and spared him the time needed to be in both places by convincing his crew. Or both. It doesn’t matter much either way, because Bowen’s quartermaster lies dead nearby and Ashton’s is not his fucking problem, and he is going - to - die -

He squeezes his hands tighter around the neck of the bastard who is trying to choke him in turn and doing a very successful job of it, and then, suddenly, the pressure is lifted. There is a cry from above him - the man’s eyes go wide, and then he is knocked away, and Julius stands above Jack, his dark eyes urgent.

“We must go,” he says. “My men will not hold them for long. Come!”

“What do you want?” Jack asks, his head still swimming, and Julius shakes his head.

“What you want,” he answers. “A way off this island. We will talk terms later. Run!”  

He turns, and surveys the battleground, such as it is. This fight will not last long. The Queen’s men will be here before long, and then every sorry bastard with a sword in his hand will be in for it, and Jack sincerely hopes that Silver is among them.

“Alright,” he says to Julius. “Lead on. Bowen!” He calls to the man, who nods, and barks orders, and then they are running toward the beach, taking as many of their men with them as they can possibly do.  

_*************************************************************_

_Oglethorpe’s Plantation:_

“Did you just tell me,” James asks in a strangled sort of tone, “that _you_ are our contact?”

Abigail bends at the waist, attempting to straighten her mussed skirts or perhaps to brush the dirt from her petticoats. She stands, and answers in a tone that is both patient and matter-of-fact.

“I have been helping by the man you are working with, yes,” she repeats. “After I came here - after Charlestown -”

James feels his stomach drop into his boots. Christ - Charlestown. It seems a lifetime ago for him, but to her -

Has it truly only been a year? And yet she has come here. She has embraced him as if he were a rope trailing behind a ship for a sailor fallen overboard. Somehow, he does not think her artful enough to feign such affection, and yet -

He has been wrong before, so many times.

“I was never certain,” James tells her, “if you had left before the shelling began. With Miranda gone, I’m ashamed to say I didn’t much care.”

There it is. The words are sincere. He has no excuse - no words to offer that will gentle the blow, and if the girl is going to turn from him - going to break at anything - it will be this. He is too tired to attempt subterfuge.

“James,” Thomas starts, and James forges ahead, ignoring him. He will have the truth of this. He will not put his faith in promises anymore, not again, not when Thomas’ life is at stake.

“If there’s anything I can do,” he begins, more to force the point than anything. “I can’t bring your father back, and I won’t lie to you and say that I wish to, but-”

“My father reaped what he sowed, Mr. McGraw,” Abigail interrupts him softly.

“You’ve got the right to be angry -” James starts, and she raises an eyebrow.

“I am aware,” she answers. “You have said you will not lie to me. In return, I will do the same for you, and say only that the man who raised me seems to have died a very long time ago. I very much wish that the death of the duplicitous man who replaced him had not been accompanied by such chaos.”

“Abigail -” James starts, and Abigail folds her hands in front of her.

“It is an explanation that has been of some comfort to me over the past year,” she says quietly. “It will be better for both of us if I continue to believe it.”

There is a tone to her voice - one that James recognizes, and one, he thinks, that Abigail must as well. He stops, taken aback.

“I -” he starts, and then stops again, and looks at her.

“How did you come to be here?” he asks, and Abigail sighs. She sits down on the cedar chest at the end of the bed, and looks up at him.

“When you and Lady Miranda rescued me - I recall thinking that I had been taken from one brute and delivered to the hands of another. I was frightened. I was angry. I expected so many things, and instead -” She shrugs. “I left Charlestown knowing I had been briefly in the clutches of a monster, but that monster, it seemed, was my own father - him and the man who shot Lady Hamilton. I had questions. So very many questions, and so few answers. When I began to ask those questions - I am certain that you, Lord Hamilton, can imagine how they were received. I am not certain what might have become of me in time without guidance, but I was fortunate enough to encounter a man who heard my questions and wished to offer me not answers but a way to address my concerns directly. That man received your letter, and shared it with me. When I noted the signature at the bottom, I felt I had a chance to undo some of the wrongs done by my father and perhaps find more of the answers I sought. I spoke well of you, which I believe swayed Mr. Menendez somewhat in your favor. I know that you received his answer recently.”

James stares, and Thomas nudges him gently.

The girl is sitting in front of them, still looking thoroughly dishevelled from her climb, and James cannot quite process what she has just told him. It is too fantastic. Too unbelievable, too-

She’s listened to what he had to say. She’s heard his tale, seen what her father has done, and she has done something about it, and why, why the _fuck_ , can a sixteen year old girl manage to see that action is needed and take it and yet an island full of grown adults had taken ten years to see the same? Why have both James and Thomas been enslaved if the truth is this easy to see?

Thomas squeezes his arm, and James abruptly realizes he has been standing there, gaping at Abigail, lost for words.

“We received it,” Thomas says, stepping in. “Abigail, how on earth did you come to be the messenger for such news?”

She shakes her head.

“There is no time now,” she tells them. “When we are away from this place I can tell you, but for now I have been sent to say this. Circumstances have changed, and while Mr. Menendez would like to help you and your men, events on other plantations have forced him to put the needs of those more greatly disadvantaged over your own. He still wishes to help - but we must move swiftly. If a rebellion cannot be effected in the space of three days, my intention is to leave this place with you and Mr. McGraw alone - I have no other option.”

She raises her head, and looks them in the eye, and James can see Thomas stiffen. He can see the look in his lover’s eyes - the curling of his hands as he absorbs what Abigail has just told him.

“No other option,” Thomas repeats at last, quietly, and James could not be more thrilled to hear the barest hint of anger in Thomas’ voice. It is something he has struggled with, these past months - showing anyone the anger he has confessed to feeling, and yet here it is, finally, as though he has finally managed to drink a few drops from the bottle he has been slowly filling to bursting all these years. “No other option -these men have labored here just as I! Surely they are as deserving of freedom?”

His voice rises a bit, and he does not, for once, seem to hear it. In truth, James cannot help but echo the sentiment - they have worked too hard for too long, stayed here too long when they needn’t, to be turned away now.

For her part, Abigail looks almost as helpless and frustrated as Thomas. There is a crease between her brows, and James can see the way the line of her mouth flattens, as well as the distress in her eyes.

“You cannot lead them from this place without another to go to,” she says. “Where would you propose to have them find shelter? Food? Means to travel unseen?”

The words sound a great deal like defeat, and it is not one that James has been prepared for. It is not one he wishes to accept.

“It’s hardly impossible,” James says. “If you can free the two of _us_ -”

He stops.

If there is one thing the past few months have reminded him of, it is that not everyone shares his vision. If Abigail is not truly on board - if Menendez is not -

Abigail, he remembers abruptly, is a child, still, for all that she has stood before him today with fire in her eyes and her spine straight, her bravery in coming here equal to that of any grown adult. Furthermore, he is lucky that she has included him in her rescue efforts at all - there is no reason, absolutely none, for her to have done so save her fond memories of Miranda and Thomas and her own curious nature. He passes a hand over his face. He is tired - it has been a long day, and a longer three months, and a still longer decade before that, and he is not, he knows, thinking clearly at the moment.

“Forget I said anything,” he says, and lays a hand on Thomas’ arm. “You’re doing what you are able, I know.”

“I am sorry to say that James has always been the more sensible of the two of us,” Thomas says softly, and James looks to his lover to find him looking over his shoulder, a chagrined expression on his face. “I am sorry, I should not have asked -” he starts, turning back

\- and Abigail shakes her head.

“I did not say they could not be freed.”

Her words are uttered in a quiet tone, but there is steel in them. She looks to each of them, her gaze piercing.

“I cannot imagine what you have been through, but I promise you, I am not here to end your rebellion. I have told Mr. Menendez that I will help you and your men if I may and I still intend to do so. We have three days,” she continues. “If we can walk out of those gates before sunset on Tuesday, it can still be done. Is there a way?”

It takes a moment.

James nods.

“If we move our plans forward -”

He turns to Thomas.

“You know these men better than I. Do you think they can be ready in three days?”

He turns to his lover, and watches Thomas’ face, wondering, hoping - waiting.

This, he thinks, is going to be the crucial test for both of them. Until this point, he and Thomas have acted in concert, yes, but it has been a tentative thing - a sort of encouraging attempt at what they once had, while Thomas has been reintroduced to the notion that he is not, and has never been, fucking _property_ , required to sit by and shut up and beg for the barest scraps of decency. While James has breathed air that no longer stinks of despair and woken more than once with the realization that whatever else may be true, he is alive, still, and for the first time in ten years, happy to be so.  While both of them have come back to the realization that there is someone in this world who cares about them, above all else - that they may speak and be listened to, rather than fought with, and here is Abigail as a testament that it is so.

James has never anticipated being in any way grateful for his struggles over the past decade. They have been soul-rending, terrifying, painful-

And Thomas, it has turned out, has been through so much the same. There is much of his lover’s experience of the past ten years that has rung horrifyingly familiar. The lies. The scars. The powerlessness. They are the same, and it shows, now. He can read the look on Thomas’ face. He can see the hesitation born of loss, and the longing - and the moment that he screws up his courage to reach out and demand that which is his by right. It startles James for a moment - and then leaves him breathless, because after so long - after so many years -

He has his Thomas back, and with him, he can move mountains.

“I don’t know,” Thomas answers finally. “But I am willing to try. James - we may need to discuss the outer walls and Martin’s proximity to them again. It will need to be coordinated carefully and carried off perfectly - there can be no room for error. Can the plans to obtain the weapons be moved up to tomorrow?”

His voice sounds reassuringly firm. His hands do not shake. He does not retreat - merely asks a question in the quiet, resolute tone James has missed so much and heard only the night that Thomas vowed to make Silver pay for landing James here. It is a greater relief than he can express.

“I can have them here by tonight if I go and threaten our weak-willed friend on the eastern wall,” he answers, and Thomas flashes him a smile.

“Excellent,” he answers. He looks, just for a moment, as if he would say more, but they are not alone in the room, and they have, quite suddenly, very little time to work with. Finally, he simply crosses the room, and stands before Abigail for a moment. His hands are at his sides, hanging, but he looks as if he wants to reach forward - to embrace her.

“Abigail,” he starts. “I’m afraid I’ve lost my gift for eloquence, but I wanted to say -”

He trails off, seemingly searching for the words. She sits, and looks at the chest she is sitting on.

“Thank you,” he says at last. “You cannot know what your presence here means to me. I had thought -” He shakes his head. “It doesn’t matter now,” he says, and to James surprise and relief, he smiles - truly smiles at Abigail. “Thank you.”

“I’m so sorry,” Abigail murmurs quietly at the same moment. “I am so sorry that my father was your downfall. I’m so sorry for Lady Hamilton. I’m sorry -”

She stops, hearing Thomas’ words, and looks up. There is surprise on her face - surprise, and perhaps a bit of relief.

“I did not come here for your thanks,” she says at last. “But I am glad to receive them rather than your recrimination, which I would imagine you have saved for my father and his like. Mr. McGraw - I know you’re not precisely thrilled to find me your rescuer -”

James shakes his head.

“Only surprised,” he corrects. “The last sight I had of you was over dinner in your father’s house- you can hardly blame me for imagining you had fled back to England. I wouldn’t have blamed you, certainly.”

Abigail stands.

“A wise man once told me a story,” she says, “about a young man stolen by the Navy, abused by the government he trusted. An even wiser woman explained to me the difference between men and monsters. I believe I would, having learnt from those stories, have found it very difficult to go back to England. Harder still to remain silent knowing something of the world beyond my schoolroom and my books. No, Mr. McGraw - I have no intention of returning when there is work to be done here.”

James snorts.

“I’d like to hear how you intend us to do that work while we’re staying in this house,” he answers, and Abigail gives him a grin.

“You are free men, Mr. McGraw. And free men may expect to be able to take a walk now and again, may they not?”

**********************************************************************************

Madi spots Julius waiting for them on the shore, and for a moment - just one - she thinks they are sunk.

They emerge from the treeline with the sounds of pursuit still in their ears. They are ragged around their edges - Vane is most definitely the worse for wear, bleeding and swearing under his breath as he leans on Madi, having finally given up the ghost of pride in favor of making it to the ship. He’s surprisingly warm, she finds, and she is uncertain whether he is developing a fever or not. It is a worry for later - for right now, they must get off the island, and swiftly. The ship waits for them - there, beyond the sand, with a launch ready -

And Julius standing between them and safety, and for a moment, Madi forgets diplomacy. She has come so far - she is so close - and this man, this usurper-

This man who is one of the people she swore to protect stands in her way. She takes a deep breath.

“If you think to gain anything by preventing us from leaving -” she begins, and then stops, and starts again. “Julius,” she appeals. “Let us depart. Let us leave this place - please.”

Julius shakes his head.

“Not without me,” he answers. “Not without my men. That was the deal.”

“What deal?” Vane asks, still leaning on Madi. “I came to an agreement with Philip Ashton, not you. The fuck do you think you’re getting?”

“What I promised him,” Jack Rackham says.

She should be touched, she supposes, that Vane does not hesitate - he spins, putting her firmly behind him, safe from harm between himself and Hennessey, and draws his gun on Rackham.

The tall, thin man does not move - merely stands, hands held up, unarmed.

“Charles,” he says, “- do you really think after all I’ve done to see you home safe that I would now contemplate blowing your brain out of your skull? Or hers?”

“Dunno what you’d do anymore,” Charles answers. “Not letting you back on my ship until I do, either.”

“I’m not asking you to do so.”

Dawn is breaking over the horizon. They have, she realizes, been up all night - all of them, and they are all weary. She can see Charles’ hand shaking, and if she can see it, so can Rackham. He is perceptive - this much she has learned, and opportunistic, and she cannot quite believe the words that she is hearing come out of his mouth.

“You would hand your ship over?” Hennessey asks, and Rackham spares him a glance.

“There are,” he says quietly, “a number of the men who saw your fight with Mr. Silver. A number of them, it seems, who have recalled whom they swore to serve - and whom they swore to rescue. As long as our goals were aligned in seeing you freed -”

“Get to the point, Jack,” Charles growls.

“Mr. Silver divined your plans to go and find Flint. He went to Captain Ashton’s crew, harangued them into changing their minds somehow, and hearing his opposition to your plan, several men from other crews expressed a desire to -”

A gun clicks behind her, and Rackham swallows hard.

“Captain Rackham went to a Captain Bowen and gathered those men who wish to follow Captain Vane. I aided him in leaving the settlement against Silver’s wishes - these are the survivors. There are not enough to sail the Eurydice, and so I have brought my own people. With an admiral, a captain, and what is left of Captain Bowen’s crew, there should be no difficulty in finding men to teach us what to do,” Julius says.

“And you, Jack?” Vane asks. “I don’t see any of your men here.” Rackham tucks his hands behind him.

“I’ll be staying behind,” he answers. “I’ve no wish to be run through by Flint when you do find him. Similarly, I doubt he would wish to see any of the men who delivered him to Savannah among your crew.”

Find, Madi thinks. It is a quaint term for freeing someone from slavery. There is silence for a moment, and then -

Madi can feel the sigh that goes through Hennessey. She feels, too, the moment that he ceases to train a gun on Rackham’s forehead.

“We cannot afford to say him nay,” he points out, and Vane throws a look over his shoulder.

“I’m not sure we can afford to say yay either,” he answers. “What the fuck do you think you’re doing, Jack?”

“With any luck? Bowing out of this entire mess while I’m still ahead. Or, if you like, I’m seeing to it that you and Flint take your war North, instead of coming back here to finish the job. And preventing a civil war, all in one. Not a bad day’s work, all in all.”

There is a tightness to Rackham’s voice that belies the light, airy nature of his words. His hands, hanging at his sides, seem oddly without purpose, and Madi abruptly understands that the tall pirate is nervous - nervous, and perhaps even remorseful.

She is not certain how she feels about that hint of guilt.

“If you think this somehow redeems you in my eyes-” Charles starts. The hand that does not hold a gun is clenched into a fist around his sword, and he seems to be considering running Rackham through on the spot, outnumbered or not.

“I can’t deny the thought had crossed my mind,” Rackham interrupts. The words stop Vane in his tracks - he stares, plainly surprised at the admission. Rackham sighs, shoulders slumping.

“Charles,” he entreats, “Go. Please. Take the Princess and - why _do_ you have an English Admiral accompanying you? No. Nevermind. Go. Find Flint, give him my apologies, and then, maybe when all of this is over, if it is ever truly over - well, perhaps we can meet and talk this over like rational men. Do try not to die, won’t you? I’d hate to think I’ve been through all of this for naught.”

Vane does not speak. He turns, and walks away, and Madi can see Rackham’s shoulders slump.

“I’ve fucked it up properly this time,” he murmurs, and Madi raises an eyebrow.

“Yes,” she agrees, “you have. You have neither my thanks or my forgiveness. I want you to understand that. I have one question, only. Was Captain Flint badly injured when you took him away to be imprisoned for the rest of his days?”

Rackham winces.

“If you mean in the physical sense, then - no,” he answers. “He was in one piece the last I saw him.”

She feels a cold shiver run down her spine at the words.

“And otherwise?” she asks sharply, and Rackham opens his mouth, and shuts it again, as if he is searching for words - for excuses, or explanations, or anything other than damning silence. She has her answer in that silence and the look on his face, and she closes her eyes for a moment.

“Look after Charles,” Rackham requests, finally, and she opens them again. “I realize it may sound trite, but I fear what this may bring out in him.”

She can feel her hands tighten into fists. She takes a step forward, and then another, and, in the knowledge that Julius is watching impassively behind her, she grips the front of Rackham’s coat. She is not tall enough or strong enough to lift him - she does not need to.

“Make very, very certain that Mr. Silver has left this island within the week,” she says. “And if I _ever_ lay eyes on either of you again, I will not hesitate in seeing you die. The fact that you are here will not dissuade me. This does not fix anything you have done -”

“Your Highness,” Hennessey says, and she turns.

The Admiral, she thinks, has not yet had words with any of the men who have imprisoned and enslaved his son. He looks as though he would very much like to have several with Jack Rackham and if they are to sail with the man, she and Julius will need to have a talk.

She releases Rackham, and turns, and walks away, but not before she hears Hennessey begin to speak. His tone is quiet, unassuming - and damning.

“I was in your position once,” he says conversationally. “I imagine what you are feeling now is similar to what I felt then. I imagine you are trying to persuade yourself that it will pass - that in time, you will be able to see your reflection without hating the man looking back at you. Allow me to disabuse you of that notion. It will not pass, or fade, or diminish. The pain you feel will never leave you. You should accept that now... and learn to handle it better than I did. You may tell John Silver the same.”

She is moving across the sand, toward the launch - she does not hear the rest of the conversation if there is one, but when she turns back, Hennessey is striding toward her. He does not speak - just joins her as she hops into the launch, and gives Vane a stern look until the taller man lowers his gaze and gets into the launch as well, giving up all attempts at launching the small boat out to sea. Together with Julius, Hennessey pushes the prow, then both men jump inside as they push away from the shore.

“You’re going to have to tell me your stake in all of this eventually,” Vane says, and Hennessey does not answer - only stares outward to sea, toward the ship that will take them all away from this place and toward an uncertain future.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As always - beta-ed and gifs made by the lovely @bean-about-townn who has very, very kindly granted me permission to use them in the fic. Thank you, darling Bean!
> 
> As always - I live for comments. They keep me writing


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So - this chapter took a long time, but in recompense, it is a very long one. As always, I adore comments and kudos - they keep me writing, and encourage me to do it faster.

The plantation bell is ringing.

It sounds over the fields as the sun begins to rise - a loud, clanging sound, meant to raise men and animals alike from slumber. It clangs, over and over again, louder than any church bell, somehow. Once, twice, thrice, again -

Thomas jerks awake, breath coming short in his chest, and flails. He must get up - it is time to start the day’s work, and if he is found here, in bed, the overseers will see to it that he cannot lie down for days. He’s already dressed - except that he’s not, and oh God, what had possessed him to go to sleep in the nude -?

“Thomas,” James’ deep voice says beside him. “Thomas! It’s alright, breathe. We’re not going to work today.”

What in the hell is James talking about? He’s been here long enough to know what happens to prisoners who don’t work. He’s seen it - he’s come damn close to experiencing it himself, twice, as a matter of fact. Thomas turns to his lover, protest on his lips -

And remembers. James. The bed. The way they had climbed into it the night before, practically giddy with the luxury of it and vowing in whispered voices to sully Oglethorpe’s sheets with their naked bodies rather than remaining clothed. He sags back onto the bed - the _bed,_ not a cot, and that, he thinks with some amount of irritation at himself, should have been his first clue. He is in bed with James, and they are not lying on the ground on the makeshift bed that they have created in the past three months, or one on top the other in Thomas’ inadequate accommodation in the barracks. They are in a real bed, with a soft mattress which he recalls wondering at the night before, and pillows that Thomas now hugs to himself and buries his face in to hide his embarrassment at startling awake thus. It is still early morning - very, very early, and for the first time in ten years, Thomas can appreciate it, although now he struggles to recall what it was he liked about early mornings in London. With some effort, he remembers rising with the dawn on the rare occasions when he was not awake absurdly late the night before, attending a party. He remembers enjoying the silence of the dawn, and the feeling of the world only just waking, and the possibility of the new day.

His younger self, he realizes, had had some peculiar ideas. Not bad, necessarily - just peculiar, particularly concerning the value of sleep. He nestles his face deeper in the pillow, enjoying the softness and the wonderful smell of linen cleaned with soap that smells like flowers rather than lye. James reaches out and gently rubs his bare shoulders, and Thomas shivers at the contact. It is no longer dark - not truly, and he is bare the way he has not allowed himself to be in so long when the sun is shining. He can imagine what James is seeing - what bumps and ridges James’ eyes are lighting on properly for the first time, having glimpsed them before only in half-light or imagined from what his fingers can tell him. He buries his face deeper in the pillow and allows James to continue. His lover’s hands do not falter in their soothing rhythm, and Thomas breathes out a sigh of mingled relief and lingering worry. Of course - James will have seen worse than the marks Thomas bears. He will have seen it a thousand times, and yet -

 _He has not seen them on_ _me_ , a tiny, treacherous voice whispers in his head, and he tries not to hear it - tries to banish it. It is wrong - it has always been wrong, since the time that Alfred had begun to plant such doubts about his worth in Thomas’ head as a child, and he will not listen to it now. As if hearing his thoughts, James’ lips brush lightly against a spot on Thomas’ shoulder blade, and then Thomas stifles a gasp as James nips lightly at the nape of his neck.

“When we leave here,” James promises in a teasing rumble, “I’m not leaving your bed for a month.” Thomas cannot help it - a laugh wells up in him, escaping as a relieved huff of breath, and he rolls over, looking up into James’ face.

His lover has not been half so shy about baring himself, and yet Thomas still cannot help but let his eyes roam. James’ body has changed, he recognizes, just as Thomas’ own has done. He lets his fingers trace once again over the tattoo on James’ bicep, and then allows that same hand to move to the horrific scar that crosses his lover’s chest. There are marks on James’ back and shoulders, too, and yet, for all of that -

How, Thomas wonders, can he ever have wondered how James might feel about Thomas’ own scars when Thomas cannot feel anything but wonder that James has returned to him through all the strife he can read on his body? He rises up off the bed, and, wrapping his arms around James, brings him down toward Thomas for a kiss. He allows one hand to rise, carding through the short strands of James’ hair where they are growing in delightful curls that Thomas knows from experience will disappear as they lengthen. He cannot speak just yet - cannot find the words, and yet he wants to say them - wants to say so _many_ things to James, about James -

He grips James’ hair a little harder to make up for his lack of eloquence - just enough to earn a whimper, a sotto voce whine that sends a thrill through him straight to his cock. His lover’s eyes widen, and then a growl comes from him. He lowers his head, and Thomas swallows a gasp at the feeling of James’ teeth on him, nipping harder than before. He does it again, and then his lover pinches one exposed nipple, and Thomas cannot stifle a moan. He will have this now. He is alive, and they are free, and Thomas never intends to spend another moment _wishing._ He will reach out and take what he wants and damn what has been done to him, all ten goddamned agonizing, _soul-scarring years_ of it. He raises his hips, drawing a sharp gasp from James, and meets his lover’s eyes.

“You want this now?” James asks in a rough voice.

They should wait for this. The thought crosses his mind - they should wait until they are truly, really away from this place before they celebrate. Before they begin the work of reclaiming their bodies- before they allow themselves this joy, but Thomas also recalls the first day of his imprisonment.  He recalls the moment he had thought to himself that if he had just kissed James again, if he had only spent more time tucked safely away in Miranda’s arms-

Thomas nods.

“I’m not waiting another moment,” he answers, his voice rough with emotion, and it is all the more prompting James needs. He kisses Thomas fiercely. There is a visceral thrill to this, Thomas thinks. He is not heeding that damned bell. He is not going out there - he is not going to give Gibson the overseer his customary meek, obedient look, or the scowl that has followed it in recent months when the man turns his back. He is not going to pick up any damned garden implement, not going to pick splinters from the hoe out of his palms tonight, or any night following. He is not going to give these bastards one moment more of his life. He is going to live, and it starts here and now. He relishes the delicious softness of the sheets against his skin - the slide of them against his bare backside and shoulders. He feels the roughness of James’ hands against him - shivers at it, and allows himself the luxury of a small sound - one that he has not been allowed to utter in too long, the kind he has trained himself out of making since Bethlem, when his wants and needs became suddenly secondary to the need to remain unnoticed and unchastized.  He allows the sound to escape him again, and kisses James just as fiercely as he is being kissed, then gasps as James’ hands travel to his arse.

“Do you want me in you?” James asks, and Thomas shakes his head frantically. This is not about allowing himself to be taken care of - not just yet, not now. For now - for now he needs control of his own body back, and lying beneath James to be taken apart will not help with that.

“No,” he murmurs. “No - the other way around, I need -”

“You need what?” James asks, his voice quiet, and Thomas meets his gaze.

“I’d like to set the pace, this time,” he says finally, voice not quite shaking but close to it. “Please.”

James kisses him, and his hands tighten on Thomas’ arse, and then they are gone. They switch places in a tangle of limbs and hasty movement, and then Thomas finds himself looking down at his lover. James’ green eyes watch him with both love and concern.

“Better?’ he asks, and Thomas cannot help but nod and then lower his head, cannot help but kiss and suck a line of marks over James’ collarbones and down the centerline of his torso until his lover is panting for breath, his hands fisting in the sheets. Thomas reaches James’ hips, and then looks up, taking a moment to admire James’ form in the soft morning light. His lover’s skin gleams with sweat- his chest is heaving, his eyes are screwed shut, and then they flutter open, and he looks up at Thomas, frustration flickering over his face.

“Are you going to continue?” he asks, and Thomas grins, and kisses the tip of James’ rigid cock, and draws an absolutely filthy swear word from his lover’s lips.

“You said you’d set the pace,” James hisses. “Get to it, damn it -!” He swears again as Thomas takes him in his mouth and draws off, returning to laving kisses over James’ hips.

“Patience, darling,” he says, and James groans, and bucks upward helplessly.

“You’re fucking -” James starts, and then whines again as Thomas moves upward again and kisses him, and rolls his hips against James’.

“I’m what?” Thomas asks, and James lifts his head, and kisses him, biting at his bottom lip as he does so.

“Beautiful,” he growls “Infuriating. Intoxicating - ” He raises a hand to Thomas’ head, fingers twining in his hair and tugging lightly, and Thomas gasps -

“Safe,” James breathes in his ear. “Free. You going to help me celebrate?”

It has been three months, and Thomas still feels a chill sweep over him at the feeling of James touching him. He still thrills at the slightest, most innocent of human touch, at times - and still cringes away now and again from unexpected sensation. The fear of it has unmanned him more than once - taken all zeal from his limbs and left him shaking and weeping in James’ arms.  He hates - _hates_ , with all the fiery burning passion of the damnable Southern Carolina sun itself, that his heart races during those times and his palms sweat and part of his mind shrieks in fear of a blow that is never going to come from the man he loves with all his being. He hates the fear of it - and the feeling of that hate sweeps over him in a great wave, drowning him, and he closes his eyes against it. What the hell have they done to him - what have they turned him _into?_ When the hell did he become this - _this_ -?

And then sometimes - sometimes there are days like this, and he devoutly hopes there may be many more, because on days like this one, he feels as if he might, just possibly, have control of his own body once more. As though he might, perhaps, be himself again, and such days are glorious. He thrusts his hips against James’ again. There is none of that numbing, choking anger or fear right now and he feels only the heat coiling within him and the sensation of James’ hands and mouth and the warmth of him. Thomas does not know what has made the difference - whether it is one thing or a combination of many, but today -

He feels his cock rub against James’ again, and the sensation is enough to blow his lover’s eyes wide.

“Jesus, Thomas,” James groans, and Thomas grins.

“I love you,” he breathes. “You’re breathtaking.”

He closes his hand around both their pricks, and draws a hiss out of James. They have nothing to use for slick, but it does not matter - they are both leaking heavily enough to serve. He takes a brief moment to thank whatever God has made them both that he has provided such infinite means of satisfying their urges, then recalls that such a prayer is probably sacrilegious at the very least, which reminds him of something he had meant to tell James - something he had thought on, in the interminable years without him, that his lover and Miranda would have - appreciated -

James has taken the opportunity of Thomas’ distraction to take hold of his hand, raise it to his mouth, and suck on two of his fingers, and the sensation is enough to make Thomas’ cock jump in his hand. James raises his eyebrows, mouth still stretched around Thomas’ fingers, and Thomas can feel the dribble of precum that leaks out of him, running down his shaft toward James’ belly.

“Fuck,” he hisses, and James laughs around Thomas’ fingers as he takes in the look on Thomas’ face. The vibration of his laughter travels up Thomas’ arm and sends another wave of warmth washing over him. He withdraws the fingers, and gives James a mock reproachful look as his lover nips at them on the way out. He sits up somewhat, and feels James’ hands come to rest on his hips, helping him not to fall over as he uses both the precum and the spit to slick himself, then moves his fingers to James’ entrance. James watches him through the entire process, and the slight hitch in his breath as Thomas touches him does not escape Thomas’ notice.

“Alright?” he asks, and James swallows hard, and then nods.

“Fine,” he answers, his voice husky, and Thomas might press further, but James rises up off the bed, and kisses him senseless, and then takes hold of Thomas’ prick to guide it into himself, and Thomas abruptly realizes that James has been preparing for this. For how long, he is not certain, but his lover is definitely ready for him. He is loose - loose enough, anyway, for Thomas to feel little discomfort as James’ flesh parts around him, and Thomas knows that he has to have worked himself open somehow. He is slicked already, and how -?

“James,” Thomas starts to say. “How in the hell have you -?”

“Lamp oil,” James grunts, and Thomas understands.

“Well done,” he praises, and feels the corner of his mouth curl upward in a grin when James flushes. He has always liked to be praised, Thomas recalls, and feels a silent thrill at knowing that this much at least has not changed. He thrusts shallowly, testing, and feels James clench around him and then relax once more. He has only the tip of his cock in James at the moment, but the rest can follow, he thinks. He looks to James for confirmation and receives a nod, and then James gives a gasp and a wince as Thomas slides in slowly, inch by inch. He stops for a moment to give James time to adjust, and then with one long thrust, seats himself fully.

James takes a deep breath, and then lets it out again in a relieved exhale as he adjusts to the stretch. He raises his head and gives Thomas a roguish grin, and God - that grin, he thinks, should be outlawed, or at the very least recognized as some form of weapon not to be taken before the Queen, for example, since it is so very devastating. His cock twitches again, and he groans.

“You were hoping for this,” he accuses fondly, and James simply rolls his hips,

“Dying for it,” James admits, and Thomas simply leans over his lover, kisses him long and slow and languid, and then rolls his hips in turn, garnering himself a punched out gasp from James as he hits the spot inside him that he knows will drive James closer to the edge of bliss.

“Fucking - tease,” James chokes out, and Thomas grins, and then begins to set a rhythm, a gentle push-pull that turns into something harder, and faster, more punishing -

It does not take much for either of them to come. One day, Thomas thinks - one day, they are going to last longer. One day he and James are going to have the time and the space to become properly used to one another again, and then perhaps both of them will last past the first real friction against their pricks, but it is not today. He closes his fist around James cock, pulls and feels his lover clench around him once more, and then -

Thomas comes first, and James follows not long after. For a moment both lie, spent, catching their breath, and then James gives a low, exhausted, sated chuckle as Thomas pulls out.

“Feel better?” he asks, and Thomas holds him close, and nods. He does - he absolutely, definitely does now, with all his limbs singing their satisfaction and a sleepy haze starting to settle over him once more. He has just time enough to murmur his thanks before he nods off, and feels James’ arms close around him.

When he wakes again, James lies beside him, still asleep as well, and the damn bell has stopped ringing, and the thing in his head that is still lost and frightened and broken is quiet. Thank God, he thinks, for that - or rather, thank James. He looks over to his lover. It is still morning - still early morning at that, and now, perhaps, Thomas can bring himself to think - to contemplate the day before them.

James looks peaceful in sleep - younger, somehow, and Thomas is loathe to wake him, but he has little choice. He prods his sleeping lover once or twice, and garners a sleepy murmur before James’ eyes open, and he looks up at Thomas with dawning confusion and then comprehension.

“Morning,” he mutters, starting to sit up.

“We need to get up,” Thomas says regretfully. “Abigail will be waiting for us. This revolt won't happen unless- “

“Unless we make it happen,” James agrees, and sits up the rest of the way. “We’ll need to speak with Monfort. He’ll be helping to clear the fields today- I don't know how we’ll explain our presence. I don't know about you, but I have no particular desire to pretend to any inclination to muck in with the others in solidarity before we leave, and I can’t imagine Thompson or Cooper believing me if I claimed otherwise.”

Thomas shakes his head. He knows the two guards James speaks of - suspicious bastards, both.

“Nor can I,” he answers, and drags a hand through his hair. “Whatever else happens, I need to speak with Fleming to coordinate the arrival of the powder and - it must be hidden, and it must make it past the gate -”

“I know,” James soothes. He reaches over and kisses Thomas’ temple, and then he is up, out of the bed, reaching for the trousers and underthings he discarded the night before. “We’d best not discuss it here,” he says, and Thomas nods. James is right - Thomas is only too familiar with the way that the walls have ears in such places as this.

“I imagine,” James says, “that guests in the master’s house might expect to be fed.” He is pulling up his trousers as he says it, and Thomas barely hears it - he is too busy mourning the loss of the excellent view he has had until now of James’ freckled backside, and wait - did his lover just mention food?

“I suppose they might,” Thomas agrees, cautiously. “What do you suppose might be offered, were we to enquire?”

He is attempting not to imagine, but he is hungry - dinner the evening before had been sent to their room, Oglethorpe apparently having come down with a sudden case of sullen pique and retired to his chambers shortly after their encounter. Thomas, when they were told, had been in the middle of the most extensive toilette he had had the luxury of in years, but had still found himself laughing - holding onto the wash stand, in fact, to contain his mirth at the notion of Oglethorpe sitting in his rooms in defeat, stewing over being beaten by a sixteen year old girl. He recalls laughing, too, all through dinner, shared with James and eaten with silverware he had definitely seen James eyeing speculatively for its worth before shaking his head.

“Too difficult to sell,” he’d said, in response to Thomas’ inquisitive look. “We will need funds when we leave here, though. Any thoughts?”

His lover, Thomas thinks, has much the same look on his face now that he did last night, eyeing Oglethorpe’s cutlery.

“I don’t know about you,” James says, leaning closer and speaking quietly, “but I intend to go and see if the cook can’t be prevailed upon to liberate a few eggs and slice some ham since they saw fit to butcher three pigs not long ago. I’d imagine they’ll need the room in their stores. Care to join me?”

Thomas is not an early riser. He has never been a man much inclined to greet the dawn, and when this is over, he fully intends to situate himself such that he may resume his customary habits of more than a decade ago at least in that regard, but for now -

Ham. Eggs. Real food - served hot and bearing no resemblance to gruel. It is still such a novel concept, and he cannot turn it down. He scrambles for his clothing, has it on in a trice, and is out the door nearly before James can react, calling back -

“Come on, James - where do you suppose the kitchens are in this place?”

***********************************************************

“I’ll take it,” Vane says, as he steps over the ship’s gunwale, “that no man here has an objection to me captaining this ship for the time being?”

He is weary - Madi can see it in every line of him. He is limping, tired - bloodied, but unbroken, and he stands in the center of the deck, hand on his sword hilt. He raises his head - and meets the eye of the man she takes to be the bo'sun, who swallows hard, and shakes his head.

“No, Cap’n Vane,” he acknowledges, and Vane grunts.

“Good,” he says. He turns to the crew. “We’re heading,” he says, “for Savannah. There’s a port there where we can refit and resupply. More importantly - there is a man there that every one of you swore to follow. A man every one of you thought worthy of your allegiance.” He turns to face the other half of the crew. “That man is Captain Flint,” he says, raising his voice to be heard. “He needs our help - and every one of you damn well owes him that, because if it hadn’t been for him, not one of you would be a free man today, or face the prospect of being free men again. You follow me, and we will get him back - and reclaim what was stolen from him and from us. You with me?”

A roar sounds from the crew. Vane gives them a smile - tired, but satisfied, and then turns to Madi.

“That ought to keep them going for a while,” he says. “Long enough to get us out of here. You and the Admiral can go below or stay above as it pleases you. The men’ll need to elect a quartermaster -”

“I can get us out of the bay and set a heading for Florida,” Hennessey says crisply. “You, on the other hand, no doubt wish to stop bleeding on deck while giving any further rousing speeches you may wish to deliver.”

Vane stops and looks at him, and Hennessey raises both eyebrows, looking at the trail of blood leading straight from the gunwale to Vane himself.

“I have said it before to men younger than you and I will say it now - a captain is no good to his men if he is in the process of bleeding to death,” Hennessey says in a softer tone. “Go and get sewn up, and then together we can perhaps discuss how it is that we are going to approach our mission once we have landed.”

“While I’m doing that maybe you can find the end of that stick up your ass and give it a tug,” Vane replies, but the retort is half-hearted. “Never know - might just come out this time.”

“Perhaps,” Hennessey acknowledges, and Vane visibly attempts to contain his surprise. Hennessey turns to Madi. “Your Highness - are there any among your people who can offer assistance with bandages and stitching? We have several men wounded.”

“We have no true doctor,” Julius says, “but there are those among us who have tended our people when our masters could not be bothered.” He looks to one of his men, and the man nods.

“Tend to Captain Vane, please,” Julius requests, and then looks to Vane, who scowls.

“It’s _my_ fucking ship,” he insists. “I’ll be the one to give the orders -”

He winces, and catches himself just before his knee gives out on him, and Madi rolls her eyes.

“You were saying?” Hennessey asks, and Vane glares.

“If the men elect you quartermaster I’ll fucking eat my socks,” he grumbles at Hennessey, and then half-stumbles away, hesitating before attempting the ladder to the lower decks. He swallows hard, and then clenches his teeth, and takes hold of the ladder, and Madi forbears to go to him. They have not known one another long enough - he will not accept her aid, and that, she thinks with a stab of irritation, has been the tone of the past half day. She is on a ship full of men she does not know, and who do not trust her, or she them - and perhaps it is time she changes that, if she is to rely on them to reach her goal.

“Let me go first,” she says, striding across the deck. She lowers herself down the ladder, moving nimbly where Vane cannot, and then stands at the bottom. “Take my hand,” she instructs, and Vane gives her a look. She cannot read it - not yet, but whatever conclusion he comes to, he seems to decide that he cannot refuse her outright. He takes her hand, grasping it tightly, and allows her to steady him when he lets go. One of Julius’s people follows them down, and she turns to the man with a question in her gaze.

“I can help,” he says, gesturing to Vane’s increasingly bloodied shirt. She nods, and gestures for the other man to lead, allowing Vane to lean on her with one arm as he moves through the ship. He sits at last in what must once have been the surgery, and may be again.

“I can sit through this,” he says. “Don’t need you to hold my hand.” The words are said gruffly. He does not expect her to stay, she realizes - does not want her to leave, or at least she thinks not, judging by the look on his face and the way that his hands clench on the table while he speaks.

“You may not need a hand to hold,” she says, “but you will require distraction - unless you intend to allow -”

She looks to Julius’ man.

“Cornelius,” he supplies, and she nods. The same master as Julius, then - the same penchant for Roman names.

“Unless you intend to allow Cornelius to drug you?” she asks, and is not surprised when Vane scowls.

“Not enough opium on hand,” he admits. “I’ve developed a tolerance for the stuff - wouldn’t work all the way. Sure you can handle seeing it?”

She gives him a look, and he has the good grace to duck his head, embarrassed. He does not speak further - only begins the process of peeling his shirt off.

“Motherfucking - son of a bitching -”

His cursing is muffled, but still audible, and she finds herself wincing. The shirt is stuck - plastered to him with dried blood in spots - large spots, sticking to him and undoubtedly pulling at wounds that have reopened with the past several hours’ exertion. He is not, Madi thinks, doing himself any favors, and she reaches out with one hand to touch his arm, just as Cornelius does the same.

“Stop,” they say at the same moment, and Cornelius rises.

“I will fetch some water,” he says. “Captain. Ma’am.”

“Thank you,” she says, and earns a brief, almost startled smile from Cornelius. Like most of Julius’s people, he is not used to this - to being thanked for his efforts, not yet. He will learn - Madi is determined on that point.

There is silence for a moment, after Cornelius exits the makeshift surgery. The ship creaks around them, and the angle of the sun changes as they change tacks, and then -

“I’m sorry for what I said to you earlier.” The words come from Vane, who looks up at her, chin tilted downward, an almost guilty expression on his face. “I don’t take orders well,” he continues quietly. “Still had no right to treat you like some kind of slave driver.”

She sits for a moment and then -

“How old were you, when they did that?” she asks, and gestures toward the raised scar on his chest - the mark of the branding iron. She sees him bristle, sees the surprise and then anger flash through his eyes -

And then she hears him blow out a breath.

“Don’t believe much in small talk, do you?” he asks, and she raises one eyebrow, a smile curling at the edge of her lips. “I was eight,” Vane answers, and she closes her eyes.

“Eight years old,” she repeats. “And your parents?”

“Don’t remember them,” he answers, and looks away. “Didn’t want to know.”

“You do not remember,” Madi says quietly, “- and so you do not know how you came to be a slave. You do not know if you were sold, or given away - or taken.”  

Vane clenches his teeth.

“If you’re looking for a discussion on parents -” he starts, and Madi shakes her head.

“I am not,” she answers. “Do you remember anything of those years - or was it always orders, and rules, and pain when you did not submit?”

Charles starts, and she sits down next to him.

“I have seen many,” she says, “like you. I have spoken to many like you, who feared to obey because they could not be sure if they did it of their own free will, or because of something inside them that demanded it.”

Charles bows his head.

“First there was Albinus,” he says. “And then Teach. And then -” He stops, but Madi continues.

“And then Eleanor.”

Charles nods.

“Took me a while to understand that one,” he says. “Made me wonder if I’d ever actually known my own mind, or if someone else had been making it up for me, all these years.”

“Until Flint,” she says, and he inclines his head.

“Yeah,” he answers. “I’d ask if you know what that’s like, but I couldn’t help but overhear you and his Admiralness earlier.”

She meets his gaze.

“My mother will understand,” she says, and he nods.

“Think you’re probably right,” he answers. “Doesn’t stop the guilt, does it?”

She has just enough time to shake her head before Cornelius walks back through the door, and then there is only the washing, and blood, and Charles’ hand on her own, squeezing until it is over.

“Tell Hennessey,” he says groggily, afterward - “Let him know how this works. He’s not - fuck. Not a pirate. Won’t know -”

“I will tell him,” she promises, and pats a section of unmarked, unmarred skin on his arm before she goes above.

“He’s asleep?” Hennessey asks when she reaches the quarterdeck, and she nods.

“Yes,” she answers. He nods, satisfied.

“The men have elected a new quartermaster,” he announces after a moment, and she raises an eyebrow.

“I cannot see you acting as advocate for these men,” she confesses, and he shakes his head.

“No - nor can I. For the time being I find myself named sailing master. It’s been a very long time, but I think I recall the requirements of the post.”

“And the quartermaster?” she inquires. Hennessey raises his eyebrows and looks at her significantly, and she startles.

“Me?” she questions.

“You have the loyalty of many here,” Hennessey answers. “I should inform you that you ran in absentia against Julius. He did not seem to want the position overmuch; perhaps he realizes that thievery cannot sustain him or his men overlong.”

“He has never been one for causes,” she murmurs in agreement. “Thank you, for seeing us out of the bay. You must be tired.”

Hennessey shakes his head.

“I have spent far too long doing far too little,” he says. “I will no doubt come to regret this later, but for the time being I choose to stay awake. Thank you.”

He gives her a smile, and she returns it. They are allies, now - truly allies, in charge of this ship and every man on it, and she cannot help the exhilaration that goes thrilling through her veins at the thought. She has a command again - a purpose, and if these men think enough of her to elect her quartermaster -

Well. She would not want to disappoint them.

“I will be going below for an hour,” she says. “We will need an inventory of supplies, and I wish to know the men’s names. You have the ship, Admiral.”

“Your Highness,” he acknowledges, and turns back to watching the men in the rigging.

*****************************************************

They are being watched.

James first becomes conscious of it as they step past the confines of the house and into the fields surrounding them. There are eyes on them, from all directions. He has seen two guards, so far, throw them a startled glance when they catch sight of their newly washed and freshly shaven faces, their pressed, starched shirts (taken, no doubt, at short notice from the stock kept for the house slaves, and James tries not to allow his fists to curl at that thought. He will see this place burn, so help him). More than that, though - their fellow prisoners are watching them, and he does not like the looks on their faces.

The workers in the field do not stop working. The sound of canes being cut continues - rhythmic, accompanied by the sound of the canes themselves falling to the ground, but James can feel his fellow prisoners glance their way - and he can hear it when one of them swears, the machete in his hand having sliced through skin. James can feel the resentful looks from the rest. There is dirt on their faces, and none on his. Their clothes are chafing, their backs breaking -

And James turns, and with Thomas, he heads toward the shade they are forbidden from resting in, and the knowledge that he may and they may not burns.

“Capell must be having another bout of ague,” Thomas murmurs. “I don’t see him in the field, and Ward looks tired. God, James. How the hell didn’t I know about that?”

“It just started yesterday,” James tells him. “He’ll make it. And if he doesn’t, Ward will fight all the harder when it comes time.”

Thomas throws a look his way, and James closes his eyes.

“I know,” he says. “Christ, I know. I’d rather be taken in the mill than go that way.”

Thomas shudders.

“I don’t know how I’ve avoided it all these years,” he says. “Either horror. James - let’s turn here, I can’t go into that boiler room. If one of them were to look up at the wrong time - if we disturb them -”

James nods.

“I’ve no desire to be the reason some poor bastard loses a hand,” he answers. “We’re creating a stir already.” He darts his gaze around the field, raising his chin in the direction of some of the observers. His lover looks at him and nods.

“I’ve noticed,” he answers, looking down at the ground seemingly casually, strolling along without making eye contact with their watchers. “I’m afraid I can imagine all too well what’s going through their heads just now.”

“I imagine they think that I’ve come here to put them all under my thumb,” James says, and scarcely recognizes the light tone of his words for the anxiety that is roiling within him.

They’re strolling lightly, casually. It is an activity that James has almost forgotten how to do - the past ten years have been an urgent rush from one fire to another, but on this occasion, he is all too conscious of the need for slow, gentle perambulation. Abigail, after all, needs time, and the distraction of their presence among the other prisoners - Oglethorpe’s distraction, that is. The other inmates’ preoccupation is an unfortunate consequence, not a goal. James does not yet class himself as removed from their number - not until they are far away from here, with this place a smoking ruin behind them. Not yet.

“They’ll be telling themselves that I am a spy, and you no doubt being either blackmailed or seduced into doing as I say,” he observes with a bitter tinge to his voice. He looks down, kicks at a spot in the dirt, trying to hide his scowl. “They’ll be wondering when the blow will strike, how, and if there’s any point in turning traitor to save their own necks.”

He looks to the distance again as he walks, and tries not to feel Thomas’ eyes on him - or the sympathy and horror in them.

“I keep forgetting,” Thomas says finally, quietly. “You’ve been through more than one mutiny. Forgive me. I hadn’t - I don’t believe I had understood what you meant about the tension of it before.” He falls silent for a moment. “How do we head it off?” he asks, quietly determined, and James looks up.

In some ways, he thinks, things have not changed. In this, he is still grimly used to the way the world functions, and Thomas -

Thomas still deserves everything James can possibly do to bring his dreams to fruition, and more. Still, this time - this time they are going to be careful. They are going to be practical.

“You don’t head off a mutiny,” he answers finally. “You survive it, or you don’t, but you don’t head it off, believe me, I’ve tried. It’ll always come back to a boil unless something is done to remedy the situation it arose from. Here it may prove deadly, unless we find a way to convince them, and at the moment I don’t -”

There is a shout, and then another, and both of them turn their heads, like dogs to a hunting call, gaze drawn by the sudden commotion at the edge of the field - and god help him, James has always been strategist enough to know an opportunity when one arises.

“We have to stop that,” he says, gesturing toward the edge of the field. A guard is standing over a prisoner - one James recognizes, one Thomas no doubt will as well.

“Paleotti,” Thomas says in an almost despairing groan. “The boy barely understands a word of English, damn it all -”

The cudgel in the guard’s hand bodes ill, as does the look of terror on the boy’s suddenly colorless face. James cannot hear the conversation, but he does not need to - this is about to turn ugly.

“It’s perfect, but it’ll have to be you,” James says urgently. “My Italian’s piss poor, he’ll never trust me.”

“Mine’s not much better - it’s been ten years!” Thomas hisses.

“Have you got another plan in mind?”

There is a heartbeat of silence. He is right. They both know he is right. Here, in this place, James has no sway, but Thomas -

Thomas has never been a common pirate, or a common anything, and it is just possible he will be believed if he tells the guard there will be consequences for his actions, and then reassures the frightened lad. Lord Thomas Hamilton in a new cravat and waistcoat is no one to sneer at, or shouldn’t be. If this goes right -

They will never suspect what Thomas will truly say to the lad.

It is too late for hesitation. With a curse, Thomas starts across the field, and James follows close on his heels, his hand going to his waist for a weapon that is still not present.

“Get up!” the guard is saying. The frightened man on the ground is scrambling backward, attempting to rise to his feet and failing when his hands slip out from under him. The guard reaches forward -

“That’s enough!”

The guard turns, and James can see the moment that he spots Thomas.

“What the hell -” the man starts to ask.

“Get away from that man, or so help me God I will thrash you with your own stick,” Thomas grits out, and James cannot help but note that his lover’s hands are balled into fists at his sides.

“Hamilton, back to work,” the guard barks, and Thomas -

Thomas goes utterly still.

“Do I look like I have been working today?” he asks, and steps back. He stands, all but inviting the guard to look him up and down. He unballs his fists. He takes a deep breath and allows his shoulder muscles to loosen a little - and James tries not to shiver at the cold, hard, vicious something in Thomas’ eyes suddenly. The guard sees it - and James sees the exact moment that he realizes that he is out of his depth. He sees, too, the moment that the man recalls what it is his employer had said regarding the pair of them, and begins to panic.

“My lord - apologies -” The guard starts, and Thomas takes one menacing step toward him.

“You will never command me back to work ever again, do you understand that?” he all but hisses, and the guard takes a step back. “I am not ‘Hamilton’ to you, not now, not ever, and _you will step away from that boy._ ”

James attempts not to wince. There is something in Thomas’ voice - cold, and yet full of raw fury at the same time, and how many times - how many times has Thomas himself been on the wrong end of this man’s blows? How often? His lover’s hands are shaking, but not with fear this time, and he is almost more frightened for him now than when he had first arrived.

“Thomas,” he says quietly. They may be free men in theory, but it will not hold - Thomas must know that, and yet he does not back away, cannot perhaps. James steps closer, scowling at the guard with all his might. If he so much as takes one wrong step this could all go very badly, and James is not close enough to disarm him -

“Drop the club,” he suggests, quietly, firmly, and the guard swallows hard.

“My lord,” he answers, speaking to Thomas, and James feels a dart of relief go through him.  Slowly, slowly, the man drops the stick to the dirt. He straightens again - and then James jerks his chin away toward the field, and Thomas nods, and the man bolts.

“I think you’ve accomplished your goal,” James says after a moment - softly, his tone almost amused, and Thomas takes a deep breath and then turns, and James can see the spots of color in his cheeks. He can see, too, the way that his lover is shaking all over now, not just his hands, but the rest of him too, and his shoulders slump just for an instant.

“I couldn’t - he ordered me to go back to work and -” Thomas starts, and then runs a hand through his hair. “It was a bridge too far,” he sighs at last, and James nods.

“Good,” he answers, and Thomas flashes him a smile. He raises a hand to stroke Thomas’ back - and then turns to look for Paleotti, and curses.

“Gone,” he hisses. “Damn it -”

“I think we’ve accomplished our aim, regardless,” Thomas says, and James sighs.

“We have,” he answers. “I only hope the others believe him - the last thing we need is to sound the signal and have them all decide it’s a trap.”

“That’s not going to happen,” Thomas says firmly. “Not now. They’re coming with us out of this place.”

“Provided I can get to the powder, yes,” James murmurs. “Let’s circle back to the house. Abigail should have found the key by now.”

It’s too easy, he thinks with a spike of unease. This is all going entirely too well.

*************************************************************

_Two Hours Later:_

The key turns in the lock, and that is the moment that James knows that he spoke too soon.

There are footsteps, too close, too fast, and damn it, when did they change the patrol route? He and Thomas are about to be discovered, but they cannot be found here. If they are caught, water in hand in the powder magazine -

They won’t live to see the dawn, let alone the revolt they are trying to effect.

The powder must stay dry, the water has to be dumped -

He knocks the buckets over and tosses them into the bushes, and then grabs hold of his partner’s arm.

“Thomas, they’re coming. We have to go. Come on - run!”

“What the hell are we going to do?” Thomas’ words are a low, urgent hiss, and James looks around desperately - and nudges Thomas, points his attention to what James himself has just spotted.

“Draw them off the scent. Into that hut - leave the door open, they’ll see it -”

_Inside Oglethorpe’s Manor:_

Abigail holds up a hand.

There are men in her room. Men who stand, faces impassive, hands holding weapons - and she does not quite give in to the urge to betray herself by letting her gaze flit between them, but she can feel her heart begin to race.

“I will take it,” she says, “that Mr. Oglethorpe has sent you to fetch me.”

The closest one to her nods.

“Yes, miss,” he answers, and she nods.

“I see. It is a very strange hour, and there are better ways to invite a lady to join one for conversation.”

“He was most insistent, ma’am.”

She is being ma’amed, now, she notes, and stands.

“I will thank you,” she says slowly, carefully, and deliberately, “to refrain from touching me. I will come with you perfectly willingly -”

“Now, miss. Mr. Oglethorpe has questions - ones he wants answered.”

Abigail moves forward - and she does not stop until she has reached Oglethorpe’s study. She is not afraid of this odious little man, whatever he may think, but she fears -

She fears that she has been discovered, or worse, until the moment that she enters the study and finds Mr. McGraw and Lord Hamilton standing there as well. The guards have hold of her uncle by the arms, and Mr. McGraw looks as if he might just possibly commit murder. She does not merely fear, now - she knows.

“Lord Hamilton and Mr. McGraw were discovered,” Oglethorpe’s voice says, “near the quarters of my head overseer. Upon questioning, they could not explain their presence there -”

“I have told you, we had wandered in that direction -” Thomas begins.

“Silence!” Oglethorpe snaps. “Upon being questioned further, Mr. McGraw was found to be in possession of this.” He smacks a piece of paper down on the desk, and Abigail breathes a silent sigh of relief.

They are not discovered - not truly. There is still a chance of leaving here alive, at least - and perhaps more, although she now doubts it, given their current predicament.

“What, pray tell, is that?” she asks, gesturing to the roll of paper. She does not have to feign curiosity, for she truly has no idea what it might be. Oglethorpe’s face reddens.

“It is the plan,” he says, “for one of my sugar mills. The newest one. Tell me, Miss Ashe, can you think of a reason other than sabotage to make free with such plans?”

Well, Abigail thinks - damn. Damn, damn, and damn again, and she supposes that she should be grateful that they have, at least, managed to find a way to indicate to the men that there will be no rebellion, only a warning regarding the new sugar mill and an aborted attempt at ensuring they will be no more miserable than they are right now, provided the rumor travels. And it will - places like this have ears, and eyes everywhere.

“I am very certain that both Lord Hamilton and Mr. McGraw have good reason for their actions,” she says, lifting her chin, and looks to the latter. “Mr. McGraw?”

“You’re damned right I do,” Mr. McGraw growls. “You may not mind if you cripple the men working here, Oglethorpe, but someone ought to. Two of them have already lost a hand or worse from that fucking heap of parts you’re calling a mill. If you had actually paid attention to anything happening on this plantation you’d know - or perhaps you do and just don’t care. Tell me, which is it?”

“I fail to see why it is any of your concern, given that in two days’ time you will be no doubt be on your way to continue wreaking havoc on the West Indies, with Lord Hamilton at your side!” Oglethorpe snaps. “You can have no possible reason -”

“Your lack of compassion is appalling and I haven’t the faintest idea how to begin convincing you that you ought to give a damn about people for the simple fact that they are people,” Lord Hamilton snaps, and Abigail turns to him, startled.

There is a look on her uncle’s face she does not recognize, and she thinks it might just possibly frighten her.  

“Thomas -” Oglethorpe starts.

“Don’t you Thomas me,” Lord Hamilton snarls, and Oglethorpe takes a step back.

“I am not Thomas to you, “ her uncle continues. “I’m not a person to you - that’s it, isn’t it. I’m a slave - we’re all slaves here -

“I am not a slaver,” Oglethorpe whispers -

“ - admit it! You claim to care about your prisoners, but the truth of the matter is that none of us have ever been more than a means to an end for you, and you’re too much of a coward to own up to it -”

“No -!” Abigail cries out. The sound of the slap that Oglethorpe lands on Thomas’ face resounds through the room, and she takes a step forward, intending to go to him.

“Don’t,” Mr. McGraw warns her. “Abigail -” He shakes his head, and she stares, transfixed and horrified.

This, Abigail thinks with sudden, frightened, infuriated understanding. Her stomach turns at the the thought, all but audible in the deafening silence. This is the reason her father had feared the man she now claims as uncle. When, she wonders, had Thomas first cemented his fate in her father’s eyes? When had he first told Peter Ashe that he was wrong - first stung her father’s overweening pride? She can see it in Oglethorpe’s eyes too - he and her father are two of a kind. They cannot stand criticism - not at all, and it shows.

Thomas does not react to the blow. Of course he does not - it is a pathetic gesture, and Oglethorpe appears to recognize it. He steps back, and Lord Hamilton gives him a bitter smile.

“Should I be honored to have my beating from the master himself?” he asks, and Oglethorpe goes white.

“Out,” he orders, and Abigail is startled to realize that her uncle has acted deliberately. “Take them away. Miss Ashe will stay here in the house - I won’t have a lady penned among the men. Take Mr. McGraw and Lord Hamilton to their former quarters on the grounds - they will be guarded until it is time for them to depart.”

“What’s the matter - are you not fond of the truth?” Thomas asks, taunting. “Does it hurt, you slaving -”

“Thomas!”

Mr. McGraw’s voice is a sharp, frightened thing, and it stops Lord Hamilton in his tracks. He falters, and stops his tirade.

“Please,” Mr. McGraw says, voice shaking - and she can see the moment that Thomas realizes what she and Mr. McGraw both fear, and both remember. She can see, too, the moment that he takes a deep breath, and lets it go - and then squeezes his eyes shut, fighting against what must be bitterest disappointment.

“ _When the mind's eye rests on objects illuminated by truth and reality, it understands and comprehends them, and functions intelligently; but when it turns to the twilight world of change and decay, it can only form opinions, its vision is confused and its beliefs shifting, and it seems to lack intelligence,”_ he murmurs. “I sincerely hope that for your own sake you do not find your way out of the cave you’ve built here for yourself. The sight of daylight might be your undoing.”

As the guards lead them away, Abigail cannot help but think that Oglethorpe does not understand how roundly he has just been condemned.


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi friends. I realize it's been a long time for this one, but life kind of threw me a curveball I was not expecting and I've spent the last month running around like a chicken with its head cut off. Before that, winter was kicking my butt - that's right, your friendly local writer is a plant who cannot thrive without sunlight.

“Are you alright?”

The words sound across the otherwise silent hut, and Thomas turns.

“I’m fine,” he insists, and James feels his brows knit together.

“You’re bleeding,” he says, and Thomas raises a hand to his mouth. His fingers come away with red on their tips, and he grimaces.

“I’ll have a swollen lip for a day or two,” he says. “And a bruised cheek by the feel of it. It feels rather good to have earnt it for once.”

There is something fragile in his voice, but more than that, there is a sort of fierce anger, and James cannot help but feel that he knows that feeling all too well. He crosses the room, and bends at the waist, reaching out a gentle hand toward Thomas’ face. His lover pulls away at first, a hiss leaving his lips at the pressure against his injuries, but submits to the attention a second later, allowing James to tilt his head and examine what Oglethorpe and his brutes have wrought.

The hut they are in is small - perhaps, James thinks to himself, the same size as the ones the Maroons inhabited on their island, with considerably less by way of luxury. James curses as he realizes that there is nothing here with which to treat a wound, unless he counts the dubious privilege of the still-largely-clean shirt he is wearing. Thomas sits on the only bed, and James curses too the lack of adequate illumination to see what he is actually looking for. There is sunlight coming in through the bars on the door, and nothing else - they are, evidently, radical elements not to be trusted with a candle or lantern, which, given their actual plan, James actually cannot blame them for. Regardless - Thomas deserves better than this. There are men on this plantation who are going to pay for doing this to him.

“They aren’t too deep,” James pronounces a moment later. He releases Thomas’ face, and squeezes his shoulder with one hand comfortingly. “Remind me to clean the lip when they bring us water.” He sits down next to Thomas and presses a kiss to his temple above one of the bruises, and Thomas presses himself closer, eyes closing for a moment.

“I suppose I’ll just have to be creative about kissing you for the next few days,” he murmurs softly, and James surprises himself by chuckling.

“Yes I suppose you will,” he answers. “Typical nobility, making me do all the work.”

It is a joke, and they both know it. Neither of them are who they were; still, Thomas remains a lord in James’ eyes. Thomas smiles.

“Not all of it,” he points out, giving James a scolding look, and James raises one eyebrow.

“Correct me if I’m mistaken,” he says, “but the last work you did landed us in this hut. I’m still not quite sure what the object was - care to enlighten me?”

“Oglethorpe was starting to question your story,” Thomas answers. “I can’t very well have a revolt if the odious little bastard realizes he has reason to be suspicious, now can I?”

“Thomas,” James starts. “How the hell do you propose to give the signal from in here? For that matter -” He lowers his voice. “For that matter, the powder is still perfectly usable and the other hasn’t arrived yet. Now, I can get us out of here - that’s not the problem, but how do you propose to get to Abigail before -”

“I haven’t got that far yet,” Thomas admits. “Give it time. Together, I’m sure we can think of something.”

“I’m not sure we’ve _got_ time,” James points out bleakly. Thomas closes his eyes again.

“I know,” he answers.

********************************************************************************************

The sound of a whistle wakes him.

It must, Charles thinks, be morning, or close thereabouts, judging by the lighting and the change in the watch. He is not sure - he has only just woken from sleep and he struggles his way back into his clothing with the feeling that he has somehow managed to sleep far longer than he had intended. He is still bare-chested but his shirt, he notes, has been washed - there is, at least, less blood clinging to it, and if he were less muzzy-headed, perhaps he would take a moment to puzzle out who might have performed that small service for him. As it is, he winces at the pull of his freshly stitched and dressed wounds, and wonders if he dares throw off Teach’s dictums enough to forego seeming invincible in favor of wrapping himself in a blanket rather than putting the shirt on before he goes out on deck. He is cold - perhaps only because of the hour, or the dampness of the air. And it _is_ damp, he realizes - they must be getting further north, then. He gives in, grabbing the blanket, and makes his way up to the deck.

There’s something unsettling about the hour just after dawn - he’s always thought so, and never more so than on a morning like this one. There’s fog on the water - they’re running at less than full sail, and the hush that has fallen over the ship would be eerie, but for the regular creaking of her hull and the sounds of the men moving about, each one at his station. He makes his way up to the quarterdeck - and of course, he thinks, the man he seeks would be found there. The former English admiral reminds him of Flint in that respect - he’s thrown his lot in with pirates, but he’s still Navy enough to be up here, surveying the deck like the officer he was. Flint’s come a long way down off his high horse, but this man - this man causes Charles to shake his head, beads clacking together in his hair, and he climbs the stairs with a sense of lingering irritation.

“ _Fucking English officers,_ ” he mutters under his breath, then raises it as he gets closer. “How are we doing?”

The older man turns toward him. He’s got the damn wig on again, Charles thinks irritably. He looks a damn sight less annoying with it off - if he’s guessed right from the hints of stubble on Hennessey’s face and from the glimpse of his bare head last night, the man’s got red hair the same as Flint, or perhaps a shade lighter, and Charles can’t for the life of him think why it needs the dead animal to cover it. Hennessey raises one eyebrow at the blanket that Charles has wrapped around himself, and Charles wraps it tighter in defiance. Fuck him, Charles is cold and he’ll do as he likes.

“We’re on course,” Hennessey answers. “At least as far as it is possible to be in this damnable fog.”

“Looks as though we’re close to St. Augustine, at least,” Charles grunts in agreement, and catches the edge of Hennessey’s impressed look. “I grew up sailing these waters. Take it I was out for about a day, then.”

He looks out at the water. He is not truly expecting an answer - they are allies of chance, after all, not friends, and the question was less genuine than it was rhetorical. He does not know why he feels the need to stand and talk to this man. He’s never been prone to excess words. Maybe it’s just the quiet, filling him with an itch he can’t scratch - at least, not until they make landfall.

“Tell me - have you taken the time to think of what we will do when we make port?”

Hennessey’s words are quiet, but they startle Charles nonetheless. The man’s in his head - he must be, or else they’re more alike than he’d have given credence to the day before. He turns, and looks at him, and then snorts.

“You know what I’m planning,” he says, and Hennessey inclines his head.

“I have the gist of it,” he admits. “I can’t say I don’t share the impulse, but there is a piece to all this that I do not understand.”

“What the hell you’re doing here, on board a pirate ship, about to go rescue another pirate you have no visible connection to?” Charles asks the question half-heartedly. He doesn’t care, truly - whatever Hennessey’s stake in this, it’s his own business as long as he doesn’t get in Charles’ way. Still… he’d like to know what he’s gotten himself into.

“Why this plantation?” Hennessey asks instead, and Charles frowns.

“How do you mean?”

“If Long John Silver wished to - _sell_ Captain Flint-” Hennessey grimaces and spits the words out like the poison they are, “why this plantation? Why _this_ place? There are a thousand like it within shouting distance of the Maroon camp. Furthermore, there are Spanish encampments throughout the New World, the inhabitants of which would no doubt pay amply to lay their hands upon him. Why, of all places, this one, over one hundred and fifty leagues distant, three days out of his way?”

“Has contacts there, maybe,” Charles grunts. “Flint never gave up the location of the cache - slippery bastard might have been low on funds to make the bribe.” Hennessey gives him a skeptical look, but Charles feels his mouth curl upward at the thought. The thought of Silver’s rage at being denied the cache is a satisfying one. More satisfying still is the thought of what he’s going to use that cache to do once he’s found Flint. Once _they’ve_ found Flint - he and Madi and this man he’s not sure he can trust, but who has saved his life once already, and he might not care except -

Except that he had trusted Jack, too, and Eleanor, and the thought burns.

He turns away and swallows hard. This fear, this choking thing in his throat that seems to be rooted in the pit of his stomach is not who he is. It is not who he has been, not the man that stood defiant and refused to break as he was beaten, and he will not allow the pain of the past few months to begin ruling him. His hand tightens around the rail, and then slowly, deliberately, he releases it, breathing deep. Hennessey has saved Charles’ life and come with him to find Flint. That would have been enough to earn him a spot on Charles’ crew in the past and it is good enough now, or what the hell has he been fighting for? It’s time now that Charles took command here before the men forget whose ship it is. That means taking care of his crew - all of it. He turns to the older man, gives him a concerned once over, and feels his brow furrow at what he sees.

“Have you gotten much sleep?” he asks, and Hennessey turns his head.

“No,” he admits, and Charles raises an eyebrow.

“A few hours, around midday yesterday,” Hennessey confesses, and Charles snorts.

“Here,” he says, offering the blanket he’d come up on deck with. He’s through using it - he’s had his few quiet moments, and now he should probably get up the rigging -

His back twinges, and he winces. Alright, maybe not, maybe he’ll save going aloft for another day, but he should check their course himself, talk with Madi about the men aboard and their supplies, and possibly, just possibly, find himself some food. He’s had nothing and his stomach is beginning to tell him about it, and why is Hennessey still _looking_ at him?

“You’re - relieved of command,” Charles tries. “Ship won’t fall apart without you, unless there are more reefs in this area than I remember, and there aren’t. Go do Navy shit - get some sleep, eat something, at least sit down.”

Hennessey raises one brow.

“I’m very certain it is not in the captain’s remit to give orders aboard the ship unless during a battle,” he points out, and Charles rolls his eyes.

“Do you see her Highness around here?” he asks. “Me either, and as she’s the only other person you’re likely to take orders from -”

“And I thought you pirates valued your democracy,” Hennessey needles, and Charles bristles.

“Are you fucking shitting me?” he asks. “You’re gonna fucking fight me because I told you to get some fucking sleep and find somewhere else to use for a parade ground?”

He’s getting irritated now. It’s too early in the morning for this horseshit, and he’s not fond of Hennessey anyway and his back damn well _hurts -_

Hennessey snorts. 

“No,” he admits, “but I now believe you may be in possession of enough of your wits to keep us afloat.”

The corner of his mouth twitches upwards. His eyebrows raise, waiting - and then Charles gapes.

“You -” he starts, and then he can’t help it - slowly, he starts to laugh, because he’s been had and he knows it and if Jack can’t be around to take the piss like this, then Charles needs someone to do it. Hennessey smirks, and pushes himself off the rail.

“She’s all yours,” he says, and Charles rolls his eyes.

“Don’t hurt yourself walking,” he snipes back. There is no real rancor in the words - he’s still too surprised to find himself laughing, and Hennessey gives him what might be an honest to god grin, then walks away, heading toward the galley. Charles turns, mood lifting along with the fog, and then the wind creaks in the sails, and picks up, and they are underway again - heading out of the fog toward Savannah.

*********************************

There are familiar faces among the crew.

Madi has only tentatively completed her inventory of men, supplies, and the needs of their small ship, but already she begins to see a pattern in the faces and the names of the men she finds working in the rigging, or eating in the galley, or counting the kegs of rum and barrels of shot and powder aboard. She has spent the past two days among them - working, always working, allowing the tasks at hand to take her mind from matters best left uncontemplated, but now, when the majority of the work is done - now that she can rest again or at least think of doing so -

There is Matthias. He has become a familiar face over the past year - one of the few men who came to them knowing something of a life beyond the field and sugar mill. She recalls when he had arrived, hungry and suspicious, but prepared to listen to her father and do as he asked.

There is Eustace. He has been among them for two years, and Madi knows little of him but that he has scars up and down his back and arms and that when he speaks, she has to strain to hear him. He does not speak often.

There are Josiah, and Mosiah, brothers or perhaps cousins - both come to them somehow from the same plantation, arrived on their shores in canoes. There are Joseph and Abdu and Esther and Aya and perhaps a dozen others, and as she looks at them, Madi begins to see a pattern.

They are all men and women who have come to the Maroons within the past two years. They are running - running from her island, from a second slavery, from the damned English the way they have been all their lives. She sits among them at a table in the mess, and sees them, and the anger she has kept at bay the past two days rises in her again. There are haunted, hunted faces among them - expressions that belong on the faces of those on the run, and it makes Madi’s blood boil to see it. She knows the cause for their flight - their second flight into freedom, knows it well because she has sat at the treaty table, staring down at the _fucking_ thing, and she can hear Charles’ voice in her head, or perhaps it is Flint, but either way it has driven her to unaccustomed profanity. It is the damnable piece of paper she had told Woodes Rogers she would not take and would not sign and now, here, on the _Spyglass_ , she faces the very thing she had hoped to avoid and it burns. Slaves to the British, or slaves to her mother - those are the terms of the treaty for all these people, and so they are exiles, like her. They are running, desperate again, hopeless again  - and among them, Julius sits silent, observing all, including her. She cannot stand it - she cannot let it pass.

“Where are you taking them?” she asks, sitting down across from him. She does not request to join him - she is quartermaster here and princess and _angry_ because he has been one of the architects of this. Julius eyes her with a look she has come to expect from him, and that burns as well - starts a fire somewhere in her chest, and she clenches her teeth, and raises her chin, and looks him in the eye, refusing to rephrase her question or offer any pleasantries.

“Your mother is a canny woman,” he says at last, and Madi raises an eyebrow.

“My mother is many things,” she answers sharply. “Wise. Patient. Merciful.” She can still feel the anger burn under her skin, even more so at the mention of her mother. She clenches her fists atop the table, and then leans forward.

“She is also your Queen,” she says after a moment, low and dangerous, “and your answer was no answer. _Where are you taking our people?”_

She is on this ship with this man. She does not know his goals - but she knows too well what she has heard from him in debates. She knows where he stands - and here, aboard this ship, she can no longer afford the uncertainty of divided loyalties. She owes Captain Flint and her new allies no less than the support of her new crew - all of it, and for the most part, she is certain she has it. Julius, though, has brought her plans low once before, and he has done so with help from Silver, and she will not have it again. If she must be the Princess Royal to have what she needs, then so be it, and if it becomes obvious that she must be more, even, than that- if she must be a murderer, too -

She looks Julius in the eye - and sees a kind of sympathy there, and she feels something within her shatter.

“You would ask passage of us and still tell me nothing?” she all but hisses, and Julius sits forward.

“Your mother requested -”

“My mother is not here, nor is her protection,” she snaps, and Julius flinches - a single flinch, and yet it strikes Madi deeply.

She is accustomed to being respected, and to being obeyed. She is not accustomed to this - to the fear she sees flicker across Julius’ face just for an instant, not from one of her own. She shoves her chair backward, and rises - and Julius remains seated, remains rooted in place, his hand raised as if to ward off a blow, and the sight makes her sick.

She is allowing her fury to get the better of her, and she has been trained better. She is angry - angry at the loss of her home, angry at this breach between herself and her mother, angry at what she has been forced to do in the past two days, and it is about to consume her, unless she does something to calm the fire right here, right now. She is not certain that she wants to, and yet -

Julius is terrified of her and more than that - there is a limit to what fury may accomplish. She knows it only too well. She stares down at Julius, until he lowers his hand, until she can speak again, and takes a deep breath.

This is not who she means to be. This is not what she means to be, but somehow she cannot help but be it, and she is tired of apologizing for the rage that rises in her.

“Tell me what you mean to do,” she says, her voice a weary command that she recognizes only too well. She closes her eyes. If she concentrates, she can almost hear Flint’s voice in her own - can almost see him standing here, and for the first time she wonders if this is how he has felt. The last few days have been hard - harder than she could have imagined, and she is tired - weary to the core of her, and she cannot be, but gods help her she is. Julius sits at the table still, and she cannot find it in her to be truly gentle. Not now. Not yet.

“There is a place -” he starts, lowly, hesitantly. “Your mother has heard of it, and when the treaty was signed - when it became obvious the choice she and I both faced - you know the terms of the treaty.”

“I know them,” Madi answers. “I still do not know why you imagined you would be sheltered from it.”

“I will be,” Julius says quietly. “It has been agreed - the Queen has agreed.”

She resists the urge to shake him, somehow - to force the confession. She swallows.

“What place?” she asks, and although he opens his mouth to answer, it never comes.

There is a creak of wood, and the sound of the men murmuring, and Julius freezes. Behind her, there is the sound of someone descending a ladder, and Julius’ gaze flits from her to the man behind her. She turns, and sees the source of his distress.

Admiral Hennessey does not seem to notice the discussion. Instead, he shuffles past, headed for the galley and then, she thinks, for sleep if she is any judge. She turns back to Julius.

“There is nothing to fear here,” she says softly, quietly. They are not the words she had intended to speak, but the look of distrust and suspicion on Julius’ face breaks her heart, and she swallows hard. This is John Silver’s legacy - this fear, and her anger, and it is also the legacy of the treatment her people still face. It is infuriating and agonizing all at once.

“There is a place,” he repeats finally. “Do not ask me more, not here - on this, the Queen and I are in agreement.”

There is silence for a moment, and Madi can hear every heartbeat - every sound in the mess, every tiny creak, can feel her hands clench tighter at her sides, because -

“You are to lead them to this place,” she grinds out, “and then you are to return. To my island. To live in _peace._ ” She spits the last word out, and Julius bows his head. Madi looks at him, trying to form words - to say anything. It is wrong - it is all terribly, horribly wrong, in so many ways that she can barely articulate, but first and foremost is the terrible knowledge that she is about to be replaced.

She has known that this would occur. She has known that she is sending herself into exile, and yet it has never been more obvious than it is in this moment that she has no home anymore - only this ship, and these people, and the mission before her -

And her lingering duty to the people who cannot protect themselves.

“Will you require any assistance?” she asks, her voice a grinding, horrible thing, and she closes her eyes for a moment, allows herself this small second to grieve. It is all she will get, she thinks, and she hates the thought.

Julius looks startled, she thinks distantly when she opens her eyes again.

“I - no, princess,” he answers, and Madi nods.

“Good,” she says. “When we land - you will wish to depart swiftly?”

It should not surprise her, perhaps, that Julius hesitates.

“She said to tell you,” he says. “This is not what it seems. The runaways - they cannot be traced back to her. If she sends me it will look like the act of a rebel.”

“If she sends you,” Madi says, exhausted, exasperated, “she has the opportunity without either of us present on the island to make peace. To see to it that the British do not become angry at the loss of their admiral - and to leverage my disappearance as a bargaining tool. She will know what to do, and by the time you return, you will find the island prospering once more. Without me, or Captain Flint. We are not part of this plan. We cannot be.”

There is silence between them again. There is nothing more he can say, and nothing more she can bear to hear.

“I have one week to reach our destination,” he says, and Madi nods.

“I wish you luck in reaching it,” she answers. “Tell my mother when you return -”

“I will stay,” Julius says softly. “Until you have freed Captain Flint. Until you are safe. She should know that much at least.”

Madi nods, and Julius stands, and she cannot help the small sob that wells up in her throat as he gives her the first respectful nod of his head she has seen from him.

“Princess,” he acknowledges, and then moves off, and Madi stands, wondering if she can properly even claim the title now - if she can claim anything now, if there is even a point in continuing on beyond her current goal, when she has nothing to come back to, no base from which to start-

“If it makes you feel better, I can toss him over the side.”

Charles Vane’s voice comes from somewhere behind her, and she does her very best not to startle. She turns.

“The offer is a tempting one,” she admits, and he gives her a half-smile. “I do not think it would help our cause,” she says softly, regretfully, and he nods.

“I agree. The splash might be worth it though,” he answers, and she cannot decide if she is laughing or crying as she looks at him.

He has gotten clean at least, she thinks. He looks better now - his hair has been braided such that the braids keep the rest of the mane out of his face, his clothing is untorn and if he is in pain, she cannot see it in his bearing. And with all of the dirt removed from his face and limbs, and the small smile on his face, she is reminded of a truth she has known since she first laid eyes on him when he arrived at the Maroons’ camp alongside Flint. Charles Vane is a handsome man - and a tall one, now that he is not leaning on her or Hennessey for support or slumped over a table. She turns away. It has been three months since she has shared her bed with any man, Long John Silver included, but his betrayal yet stings. She is not ready to begin looking at other men with desire or even appreciation, and she does not have time for it now.

“He is doing what is right for himself and those of our people who have no fighting left within them,” she says. “Thank you for the offer, though. We are getting closer to Savannah?”

“Close enough,” Vane says. “I thought you and I and the old man might want to have a talk about our plans once we make port. He came down here, didn’t he?”

She nods.

“If we are very lucky, we can join him for a meal before the morning watch returns,” she answers, and Vane gives her a small grin.

“Take it you’re as hungry as I am then?”

Her growling stomach answers for her, and she turns toward the galley before he can say a word.

“You think we will need a plan, then?” she asks, and Vane, behind her, gives a hmm of agreement.

“I think whatever’s keeping Flint locked up in a place like that isn’t something we should walk into blind,” he answers, “and I’m not planning on walking away with just Flint, either. Jack may have signed the fucking treaty but we didn’t. We’ll need men.”

“That depends on who you mean when you say we,” Madi points out, and Vane snorts.

“You, me, and Flint,” he clarifies. “And any other man or woman willing to sign articles that set them against England and Spain. Next revolution is former slaves and proper pirates only.”

“You are planning on sending out invitations?” Madi asks, and hears Vane give an amused snort at the teasing tone in her voice.

“Yeah,” he answers. “By request of Captains Vane and Flint and her highness Princess Madi, any pirates worth the name who don’t want their asses kicked can come to Ocracoke to join us. Anyone that turns up with bits of John Silver in a bag gets in no questions asked, provided they turn out to actually be his bits.”

There is a curve to the corner of Vane’s mouth, and an ironic tone to his voice to match her teasing, and Madi did not think herself still capable of laughter in the face of what has been done, but clearly she was wrong. She feels the mirth bubble up inside her, and she cannot help it - she snorts, and begins to giggle, and finally, finally, begins to laugh in earnest.

“I am not,” she says through her laughter, “going to spend my time looking into bags of body parts to confirm that they belong to John Silver.” She can see the look on Charles’ face, the suggestive, almost naughty expression, and adds, “His bits did not match his moniker to begin with.”

The guffaw of laughter that comes from Charles sounds through the ship, and he is still laughing and holding his sides as they enter the mess hall, where Hennessey sits, bowl of food in front of him, one eyebrow raised.

“I do not want to know,” he says, and Charles laughs harder, and Madi sits down next to him.

“We were discussing,” she says, “what we are going to do next.”

*********************************************************************

The sun is shining in Savannah when they arrive.

It’s a small port, Hennessey thinks - miniscule, really, which with their current complement of crew members will make things more difficult. In a large port, they would not be noticed, but here - well, it is a good thing he has brought his wig and uniform along.

“I’ll find us what mounts we require,” he says. “Your Highness - you may wish to remain on the ship, or to accompany one of us.”

“I will come with you,” she tells him. “They will respect you more here if they believe you have a servant, and I have the ship’s inventory. We will need to trade.”

She does not state the obvious - there is no need. A white man in a respectable coat with a wig on his head and a dignified air will be offered better prices than Madi could hope to get, and they are here to rescue James, not to be run out of town when Vane attempts to intimidate the local merchants into both giving them the goods for free and treating her with the respect she is due.

“Either of you know anything about buying horses?” Charles asks skeptically, and Hennessey snorts.

“I’ve no doubt I’ve forgotten a great deal more than you have ever known on the subject,” he answers, and Vane gives him a surprised expression. “Where do you imagine James learnt to ride?” he asks, and Vane outright stares.

“Who the fuck _are_ you?” he asks, and Hennessey turns away. He is not ready to share that information yet, if ever. In truth, he is not certain of the answer himself - at least, not in relation to James. He clears his throat, and ignores the look on Vane’s face.  

“I will buy the horses, and in the meantime you may focus on locating Mr. Oglethorpe,” he says. Vane lets the question drop for now - there are more important matters to hand and he is not, Hennessey has observed, a man to press for answers that are not forthcoming where they do not concern him or his. Still - he doubts he has heard the last of the query.

“Can’t be far from here,” he notes. “Too many Yuchi in the area and they’re none too happy to see their land taken. Any fuck like Oglethorpe will want to stay close to town and the militia.”

“There have been no recent conflicts,” Madi points out, and Vane snorts.

“Think the English care?”

They are nearing the shore. The small launch they are in touches ground, and Vane and Hennessey jump from the boat, heaving it onto shore. Madi steps out more sedately, and looks around the small port.

“Shall we convene at the tavern when we have finished our tasks?” she asks, and Vane nods.

“See you there in an hour,” he answers. “Don’t get lost.”

The words are a jest - Savannah is only slightly bigger than Nassau, and approximately as well-constructed save for the infrequency of earthquakes.

“Kindly save some of the ale,” Hennessey says, and Vane gives him a rude gesture as he walks away.

“I’ve been in the wrong occupation all these years,” Hennessey mutters, thinking of several lieutenants and fellow admirals whom he would dearly loved to have treated with the flippancy that is apparently permissible in pirate crews. He turns to Madi. “Well, quartermistress - to which stall might we be headed first? I confess I have no desire to lead two equine nuisances around the market, nor do you I should think.”

“Four horses,” Madi corrects, and Hennessey stops in his tracks.

“Four?” he asks, and Madi begins to walk forward.

“Food for the crew - flour, rum, vegetables, and any fruit if it is to be had,” she begins to read off her list. “Salted meat, and perhaps a hundred yards of rope - the men are concerned about the foot ropes on the mainsail yard and the halyards on the same mast. We will also need at least one wagon - I do not anticipate taking the plantation without bloodshed. We will not leave the wounded behind.”

The words reverberate through him, jarring and unexpected somehow, and he stops in his tracks, struck suddenly by what he has come here to do.

He is about to participate, he thinks with a faint sense of incredulity, in not a rescue mission but a raid. He has known it in the back of his mind for the past day and a half, and yet somehow it has not sunk in until this moment, where he stands under the hot Savannah sun at the side of a young woman perhaps a third his age and finds himself about to do the unthinkable.

He is about to become a pirate, and he is not certain he likes the notion.

“You cannot be planning to lead a crew of fewer than thirty men over the road toward an armed encampment which will, I presume, have guarded fortifications.” If he can dissuade her from this course, there may still be a way to free James without undue violence. He would have his son back, not a bloodbath on his conscience.

Madi turns to face him.

“I will know better what I plan to do when I have seen the place, and Captain Flint. I cannot rule out an invasion - the men wish to have a fight, and I will confess - I am not convinced they should be denied their wishes. And the more of the fighting is done at the gates, the less of it may take place inside where it might harm the prisoners.”

She sounds alarmingly certain, and Hennessey cannot help but disapprove. This will be his first battle in nearly a decade, and if he had expected to lead it, rather than be led, he can now see that he was mistaken. The feeling is an odd one - he is used to being in command, and used, also, to having all the facts in front of him, and try though Madi might to conceal it, he does not have all the facts. She is attempting, he thinks, to discuss the matter very calmly - rationally, and had he not raised a son he might have fallen for the attempt to obfuscate. Instead, he clasps his hands behind his back, and gives her a look.

“I should think that having more information rather than less would be helpful if you expect me to act as an accomplice,” he says, and she raises an eyebrow.

She is catching on, he thinks, to his reluctance. She stops in her tracks, looking at him with sudden suspicion.

“If I tell you our battle plan,” she says, “I still have no guarantee that you will not betray us. I have taken your word thus far that Captain Flint is your son. I have heard very little from you that assures me that you know him, and that he knows you.”

“You agreed readily enough to accompany me today,” he points out, and she looks at him steadily.

“Captain Vane,” she says, “has been injured once already in defending me. I would not have it happen again, and if you truly do mean to harm us, I would have it happen such that the one who can best rescue Captain Flint is still free to do so.”

He stands, dumbstruck for a moment, and then quite suddenly, he cannot help but feel old.

He is standing here, in a place he does not love or even know well, with a woman he has known a scarce three days, getting ready to commit the first truly illegal act he has committed in a very long time, and some version of himself less committed to justice and more to order, the version that has thankfully not arrived on these shores, has just been neatly outmaneuvered by a slip of a girl who yet reminds him of the son he has come to save. Perhaps it is the emotion of the past few days catching up with him at last, perhaps it is the heat, but Hennessey cannot help but find it simultaneously bitterly funny and galling. He sits down, sinking onto a nearby rock, suddenly tired. Truly, he thinks, it is a good thing he has hung up his admiral’s hat as he clearly no longer possesses the acumen to wear it.

“If you have no intention of trusting me,” he says, “then I should like to know what it is that you intend to do with me, once your horses are bought and your supplies garnered.”

He looks up at her. He is done, he thinks. He has come so far and he can feel a sort of anger burning in him still at the thought of how very close he has come, and yet -

Did he not resign himself to this fate when he threw away the only son God saw fit to set in his path?

“You give up far too easily.”

The words come from Madi, who is now standing in front of him, her arms crossed. There is a look on her face - judging, nearly scornful, and Hennessey can feel the weight of it.

“I have survived this long,” he says. “I have brought myself up the ranks in Her Majesty’s Service - now His Majesty’s Service - from my roots as a pig farmer. I have seen battle, and death, and outlived men who should by all rights have been there at my own funeral. How then do you feel that I have given up?”

“You would see Captain Flint rescued,” she says. “Of that I have little doubt, and yet I cannot help but think that you would wish to see that rescue effected at such a distance that you might not be seen - or forgiven.”

“That is _your_ design, surely,” Hennessey counters. He is feeling irritable now - he has never enjoyed being lied to in any capacity, and he appreciates still less the insinuation that he does not truly wish to see his son again, regardless of his reluctance to start a rebellion to see it done.

Madi rolls her eyes.

“I did not say that I do not intend to trust you,” she answers. “I said that my trust has been betrayed once and I do not repeat my mistakes. You would declare yourself defeated and your continued exile from your son’s affections a certainty, when all I have said is that if you wish to have my trust, you must first earn it. If you would earn his forgiveness, you must earn that as well. You will not do so by sitting here and refusing to act now.”

The sun is too bright here. It was too bright in Nassau, too, and Hennessey half wonders if it is not baking some essential part of his faculties. Madi is right, he knows, and yet -

“I did not remain in England all these years that I might retire and throw away all I have worked toward in my life,” he says, and Madi gives him an incredulous look.

“It does not seem to me that you have worked toward much at all, if it was not the oppression of my people and the abandonment of your son,” she snaps. “Your inaction has wrought much harm already. Do you wish to see it do more?”

The sun, it seems, has also affected his ability to sit passively while he is being insulted.

“I did not abandon James!” Hennessey snaps, standing. “I was forced to repudiate him. I was forced to dishonor myself in his eyes, and I did it that others might live. That I have not come after him since -”  

“Is a wrong which should have been remedied long ago, “ she snaps. “I did not think to find the father of a man such as Captain Flint a coward.” She starts to turn away. “I will meet you in the tavern. Buy the horses, at least. If you cannot find your courage before we leave for the plantation, then at least do not betray us. You owe him that much.”

She turns, and strides away purposefully, and it takes Hennessey perhaps half an hour to come to the realization that she is right. James is here, in Savannah, and Hennessey is frightened, and for the last decade, he has absolutely been a coward.

He should not have had that drink, the first night in Nassau when he had realized that James was nowhere to be found and most probably dead. He can see it now, clearly, in hindsight. It was a bad idea, born of sorrow and guilt and grief, but more than that - he should not have had the first drink ten years ago, the one he had poured for himself shortly after James had left his office and Hennessey had all but kicked Alfred Hamilton out, and collapsed against his desk, weeping until he could no longer make a sound.

It had seemed a sound notion at the time. A drink to fortify himself against the next few hours, and another when he had managed to miss James when he came to pack his things from his quarters, and a third when he realized that he would wake the next day with no family of any kind to speak of, no legacy but whatever small amount of good he had just managed to do for the English fucking Navy, and no respect from any of the Englishmen he had just saved at the cost of his own honor and decency.

He should not have had the first drink, or the second, or any of the many that had followed, and he most certainly should not have allowed himself to sit idle all these years. He has felt sorry for himself, given excuse after excuse for his behavior -

And none of it has been good enough, or can be good enough now, and if he truly objected to piracy, believed that it deserved punishment in all cases, he would not be here now, It is another excuse, and a poor one at that. He realizes it as he stands in the hot Savannah sun and buys a horse that looks very, very like the one he had taught James to ride on when the lad had grown to a suitable height to begin learning, and he feels the guilt of it weigh him down as he buys three more that resemble the animals he grew up seeing at market and watching men haggle over -

And then, with an apprehensive, trembling step, he turns himself toward the tavern to join Vane and Madi, stopping on the way only to sell his wig and purchase a small trinket that he knows his son will want when Hennessey sees him again.

“I am in,” he says, sitting down at the table beside them. Madi gives him a small smile.

“I am glad to hear it,” she tells him. “Now - what can you tell me about Thomas Hamilton?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Not going to lie, right now comments mean the world to me. I could really, really use some encouragement just now.


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ok - so, I know it's been A Long Time since I updated. A really long time. The explanation involves life kind of blowing up on me over the past few months - my old job decided to cut my hours, I decided they weren't worth my time or energy, and then of course the new job is... well. Suffice to say I had reasons for the long delay. Regardless - here it is, the reunion chapter at last!

“What is that unholy cacophony?”

The question comes from Hennessey, and Charles snorts. The older man is riding alongside Charles and Madi, the latter of whom has finally persuaded him to remove a layer of clothing so as not to faint. He has recovered enough from the heat to begin paying attention, it seems - at least, he’s finally noticed that the trees seem to be shrieking.

“That,” Charles answers, “is the reason I smoke.” He swats at a buzzing fly that gets too near his head. “Goddamn locusts,” he mutters.

Hennessey turns toward him, a confused frown on his face.

“Insects,” Madi explains. “They sit in the trees and sing during this season. They do not like smoke - nor do I.” This last is pointed, aimed at Charles, and he rolls his eyes.

“You’d prefer to get eaten, then?” he asks. He’s been dying for a smoke since he was captured, but Madi’s giving him a look that says that should he light the cigarillo in his pocket, he’ll find himself abruptly relegated to fetch and carry duty before they ever reach the plantation, and he’s dying for a fight even more than a smoke. He gives up the notion reluctantly - they’ll still be in his pocket later when she can’t see him or smell them, after all. He turns his attention to Hennessey, who has a look on his face like a thunder cloud.

“They’ve been singing, if one may call it that, since we arrived,” the former admiral says in an aggrieved tone. Charles can sympathize for once - the noise is truly deafening.

“Screaming, more like,” he replies. “They won’t stop at night either. Best hope we’re back on the ship by then, or in a room without a window.”

Hennessey shudders.

“If Thomas Hamilton was not insane before, it will be a miracle if he’s managed not to run mad from the damned insects.”

Madi frowns.

“You learn not to hear it,” she admonishes, and Hennessey falls silent, looking chastened.

There’s an odd tension between them now, Charles thinks, and he does not understand it. The Maroon Princess has finally lain her cards on the table, and Charles for one is just as grateful to have them down where he can see them. Hennessey, though, does not look thrilled - far from it, in fact.

Admittedly, Charles thinks as the silence stretches between them - Thomas Hamilton sounds like he could be either an asset, or a pain in the ass. If there is one part of Hennessey’s thinking that Charles can approve of, it is this - nobles are more trouble than they’re worth, either for ransom or to persuade. This one, though - this one may just prove different. Charles doesn’t particularly see the harm in freeing the man, noble or not. He’s being held at the plantation, same as Flint - same as the other men Charles plans to recruit in short order, or set loose in the nearest port, if they so choose. Hamilton is a bit of a special case - from what Charles hears, where Flint goes, the former lord will go as well, which puts him on Charles’ list of men not to piss off. And Madi, he knows, has designs of her own upon the rightful Lord Proprietor of New Providence and their potential new backer.

So. Charles knows where he stands, and now he purposes to find out what the hell is making Hennessey look as though he’s sucked on a lemon, because Charles has never been happy with mysteries. With a click of his tongue, he urges his horse closer to Hennessey’s and, pulling even with the man, allows the animal to settle into a steady walking gait once more.

“The fuck’s your problem?” he asks, and Hennessey turns to glare at him.

“Are you capable of speaking without mentioning fornication?” he asks, and Charles gives him a speaking look.

“Wait ‘til you hear Flint,” he answers, grinning, and Hennessey closes his eyes in seeming despair.

“God help us,” he murmurs, and Madi gives Charles a look - a mix, if he’s not misreading it, of fond amusement and gentle chiding, and he turns his grin on her before rolling his eyes. Alright - he will lay off the former admiral, but damn it, the man’s so easily riled. He turns back to the object of his interrogation.

“So,” he asks again, less challenging now, “what’s the issue?”

Hennessey sighs.

“There is no issue as such,” he answers, and Charles raises an eyebrow.

“And how about as something else?” he asks.

“There is- history, between us,” Hennessey admits, and Charles, like the reckless idiot he sometimes is, forges ahead.

“What kind of history?” he asks. He hasn’t had time to ask Flint much about his past, but he gathers that this man is involved, somehow - that he had his part to play, and thus this Thomas Hamilton must have done too. Charles is close enough to his answers almost to smell them - he can sense it, and yet -

“The sort,” Hennessey answers, “that one might think you could infer I do not wish to discuss. My god man - how on earth have you managed to live to the age of -”

He stops, floundering, and Charles sits back in his saddle.

“Twenty-eight, give or take a few years,” Charles answers. “Never been sure.” Hennessey gives him a horrified look, and Charles meets his gaze squarely. “I survived,” he says, “by not fucking around with secrets - or lies. Before we get to Oglethorpe’s slave camp, I want to hear what the hell you’re doing this for.”

“I have already told you that I am here for the sake of Captain James Flint, as are we all,” Hennessey snaps. “Beyond that, my business with him is precisely that - my own, not for the judgment or interest of young upstarts with more courage than discretion -”

“We are here!”

“Oh so I’m a young upstart now and not, say, a common criminal. Nice of you to -” Charles starts, and then processes what she has just said. He stops. They are here - but what is here, exactly?

“Oh,” Hennessey says faintly, and for once Charles agrees. “God’s bloody teeth.”

The oath, Charles notices with a sense of vague surprise, comes from Hennessey as well.

“Fuck,” Charles agrees. “ _Fuck._ ”

There is a wide dirt track leading up to the plantation’s gates. The plantation’s guarded, _sturdy-looking_ gates. It’s surrounded by a thick wall, and there is a nearly endless sea of open country surrounding it and -

“We will need a way in.”

Fuck, fuck, fuck, damn it all -

He does not realize he is speaking the words running through his head until Madi’s horse sidles closer to his own and the Maroon Princess lays a hand on his arm.

“Charles,” she says, and Charles stops, startled at the sound of his given name.

They are watching him, he realizes suddenly - they are both watching him. He sits, still on his horse, feeling exposed suddenly, and he does not like the feeling. He dismounts and stalks away from their small group, toward a small copse of trees nearby.

“Need to stretch my legs,” he mutters, and disappears out of sight, and somehow manages to resist the urge to punch one of the nearby trees.

He was twelve, once, and scared, he thinks, and had he faced anything like this place when he first made his plan to escape, there would now be no Charles Vane, son of Edward Blackbeard Teach. There would be only Charles the slave who barely remembered that his name was Charles, because this place is - and Flint - no, _James_ is in there -

He gives in. He closes his eyes, and drives his fist forward toward a tree, and somehow cannot be surprised when his arm is knocked aside at the last minute and he stumbles.

“You will need that hand,” Hennessey’s voice admonishes, and he opens his eyes, startled.  The admiral is not the one he would have expected to dismount and stop him hurting himself. He allows his hand to drop, and Hennessey takes a step back.

“There are fucking _walls_ ,” Charles says bleakly, and Hennessey gives him a look, his eyes dark with the same grim promise that Charles has just made to himself.

“We will burn this place,” he tells him softly. “And I will ask James if he or Lord Hamilton would like to set the tinder alight.”

James, Charles notes - not Captain Flint, suddenly. He scans the older man’s face, wondering once again.  

“Have you seen what the goddamn gates say?” Charles asks, and Hennessey shakes his head.

“My eyesight is not what it used to be,” he answers, and Charles cannot decide if he is telling the truth or simply not acknowledging whatever no doubt smug thing is signified by the letters Charles had spotted. He closes his eyes again, and tries to breathe, and Hennessey allows him to do it, somewhat shockingly.

“One might take the view that the fortifications are a hopeful sign,” Hennessey says quietly. Charles opens his eyes and takes a step toward the admiral, anger rising in him again.

“How did you come to that conclusion?” he asks. His stomach is still churning, and the idea of finding Flint in there - the idea that he of all people could be in such a place - it’s worse, somehow, than Charles’ return to his former master, because he’d held all the cards, whether Albinus had liked it or not. Here, though -

“One does not bother to guard broken men,” Madi says softly. “Or erect walls but that they are necessary. The admiral is right.”

She has led the horses back toward them, and Charles has barely noticed. Somewhere in his head Teach is blustering about that - a man that wants to live doesn’t allow surprises like that. He was right about that, at least - and yet Charles had not noticed her presence, and he will stop and examine that later.

“Funny,” he says. “I recall running from a good many guards to join Teach’s crew.”

“You were not broken.”

It’s - nice, Charles thinks, somewhere deep down in him, to find a woman who does not believe in mincing words any more than he does himself. He catches her gaze, startled, and - he’s never been very good at making eye contact when someone says something nice about him but he’s doing it now and fuck, she’s likely heard the way his breath hitched just then. He knows she can see the surprise on his face - or maybe that’s all in his own head and he’s managing to keep an impassive facade and which one is worse? A better question - how does she keep knocking him off his balance this way?

He closes his eyes.

He can’t dwell on Eleanor right now, or what she had called him, or how that differs from this. He can’t. There is a prison to burn, his friend to find, and a group of men not unlike Charles himself to set free, but once that is done, he’s going to have thinking to do. He takes a deep breath, and fixes his gaze on the plantation.

“That wall’s going to be a bitch,” he observes, and Madi flashes him a look.

“I had thought,” she says delicately, “to enter through the gate.” She gives a significant look to Charles and Hennessey, who look at one another.

“You cannot possibly mean -” Hennessey starts, and Charles raises his eyebrows.

“Me - escorting _him?”_ he asks.

“Can you think of another way?” Madi asks, and Charles looks from her back to the plantation walls, then back again.

“How are we getting out?” he asks.

“There is a cart coming.”

“When we find Captain Flint, we can -”

“There is a _cart coming.”_

Hennessey’s voice finally penetrates both their consciousnesses, and they turn as one.

“That’ll do,” Charles says, his eyes tracking the cart, and then they are hurrying toward the road again.

“Do not kill the driver,” Hennessey says sternly as he mounts his horse.

“Quiet, or I’ll have to,” Charles growls. Madi gives him a reproving look, and he rolls his eyes.

“Not you too,” he mutters. “Fine. Just stay out of the way until it’s done.”

He pulls on the reins, and is not truly surprised to find Hennessey does the same with his own horse.

“Highway robbery should never be done alone,” the older man offers as explanation, and Charles lifts an eyebrow.

“Got some personal experience?” he asks, and Hennessey snorts.

“Three months,” he answers. At Charles’ surprised look, he turns. “How on Earth do you imagine I came to join the Navy but by the Crown's insistence?” he asks. 

Charles stares - and then begins to laugh. He’s still chuckling when they step out into the road in front of the gently plodding horses pulling the cart and its driver.

***********************************************************************

It is day three, and Thomas would very much like a bath. And a shave. And, if he is honest, to be permitted to piss without an escort.

Although today, apparently even a trip to the privy is out of the question.

“I swear by all that’s holy, if they do not let us out of here soon, I will make it a point to foul their shoes,” he mutters darkly, and James lets out a snort.

“There won’t be much choice if they wait much longer,” he admits, and Thomas rises to go to the door again.

“I’m certain that Mr. Oglethorpe did not intend we should be forced to sit in our own filth,” he says, and sees the guard outside roll his eyes.

“For the last fucking time - you’ll be released when Lady Ashe’s carriage arrives. Until then, you’re to remain, and if you can’t hold it -”

“It’s a trip to the privy, not carte blanche to roam,” James cuts him off. “What the hell do you imagine we’re going to do - shit gunpowder?”

“Wouldn’t put it past you, McGraw,” the guard mutters, and Thomas almost laughs - almost - at the incredulous expression that crosses James’ face.

“It’d explain why they need to go so bad,” the other guard cracks, and Thomas can’t help but raise an eyebrow.

“I haven’t the faintest idea what happens if you swallow gunpowder,” James says quickly, staving off his curiosity.

“Come on Cooper.” The more experienced of the two guards gives in. “I didn’t volunteer to clean the privies, and that’s what we’ll be doing if they piss their pants in there. Open the door. You two - stand back.”

Finally, Thomas thinks, and wonders what his odds are of overpowering these two somewhere between here and the privies.

“Not enough cover,” James murmurs. “Wait until we get back.”

*******************************************************************

“I think we can assume Flint’s got plans of his own,” Vane observes, looking down at barrels of gunpowder loosely disguised as flour. He looks to Hennessey, who raises both eyebrows and extends a hand to help Madi climb onto the wagon. She takes it, and climbs aboard to stare at the cargo they’ve just stolen.

“This is meant for a fight,” she says after a moment.

“Or an explosion," Vane answers. He grins at her questioning look, and reaches out to sift the flour with his fingers.

“Ever seen flour get too hot?” he asks, and now it is her turn to raise both eyebrows.

“It explodes?” she asks, and Charles’ grin widens.

“Goes off like a grenade,” he answers.

“I expect you’ll see it firsthand shortly,” Hennessey says. He is also grinning, now - still covered in dust from the road, and elated to find that his son has not yet given up or lost all hope. Madi cannot help but feel the same - she has worried about her friend, and what the last months have done to him.

“Need to get in first,” Charles says. He’s positively cheerful now - here is proof positive that something unusual is happening at Oglethorpe’s plantation - that Flint is inside, and well enough to plot, and yet -

Madi has never been able to ignore a possible problem.

“You do not think,’ she says, “that the powder could have been ordered by the owner of the plantation?”

“For what purpose?” Hennessey asks. “He appears to have his gates well guarded and his establishment secure. What use has he for -”

“Don’t think he’s thinking to end a slave rebellion with gunpowder _and_ flour,” Charles says. “Men like that don’t slaughter their property all in one go like that, not even when the owner goes belly up.”

“These men are not worth much to him upon resale,” Madi points out bleakly. “They have no contracts. No proof of purchase. They are not indentured - and white men do not sell other white men.”

“Clearly they do,” Hennessey points out, and Charles grimaces.

“They do if the price is right,” he says. “Doesn’t matter. The gunpowder is ours now, and I’m gonna use it to find Flint and then blow a hole in this place so wide they’ll hear it down in St. Marks. Hennessey - you and I’ll drive the cart. Your Highness - you might want to duck down among the barrels, don’t fancy anyone in there getting ideas I’d have to kill them for.”

“You are going to kill them anyway,” she points out, and Charles grins.

“Timing, princess. Don’t want to have to shoot someone before we’re ready.”

He climbs into the driver’s seat, and slaps the reins against the horses’ backs. They drive toward the plantation gates, cresting the ridge that has blocked them from view, and leave the two former cart drivers behind them to squirm in their bonds.

****************************************************************

Abigail is becoming restless.

“My carriage should have arrived an hour since,” she tells her guard. “I’ve no idea what could be keeping them - perhaps they’ve had an accident on the road.”

“Perhaps, my lady.” The guard agrees with her blandly, and Abigail tries to resist the urge to scream. It is all she has heard for three days - bland agreements, unflappable calm.

“Mr. Oglethorpe might go so far as to send riders out,” she continues. “If they have been delayed by bandits, or broken an axle -”

“Perhaps they are arriving now,” the guard says, and Abigail rolls her eyes.

“Who were you, precisely, before Mr. Oglethorpe brought you here?” she asks. “Were you a soldier? A slave? Is that why you’re being so intractable, he’ll send you back to the fields if you’re not?”

She has been working for three days, and for three days, there has been no change in her guard. No room to maneuver. Her last guess has to be the one, no other person could possibly be so - so -

The gates are opening. She can hear it, now, from her place by the window, and she turns. Perhaps that is the conveyance that will take her and the men she came to save away from this place. She peers toward the gates, sees a cart - and almost turns back, except -

She turns back to the guard. She is not frustrated now - not in the least, because she has spotted the man driving the cart that’s just come past the gates.

“Tell me,” she says, “do you think I might visit the library?”

The library, at least, is in the back of the house on the ground floor. She has seen what Charles Vane does to multilevel houses.

****************************************************************************

“They will expect us to go to the barn,” Hennessey murmurs, and Vane nods.

“The prisoners’ barracks are too near the barn,” Madi points out from the back of the wagon. “We come to free these men, not blow them to pieces.”

“The walls are thin enough to blow a hole in them but it’d be a scramble to get out while we’re getting shot at,” Charles observes. “Flint’s got to have something else in mind.”

“When we find him, we can ask,” Hennessey says firmly. “We’ll drive the wagon to the back of the sugar mill. If there is to be an explosion, it will be close enough to the walls, and if not, then it is best the men in the barracks be able to reach powder enough to shoot with."

It is a solid enough plan. Here, seeing this place - seeing these men working the fields -

Hennessey tries not to shudder. The horses will sense it, and spook, and that will draw unwanted attention, but still. This _place_ \- this detestable, sweltering place with its guard towers and its walls and its overseers -

It is no place for his James. No place for any man, for that matter, and for perhaps the first time, Hennessey thinks he can understand a piece of the helpless rage that shows itself in the way that Vane grips the horses’ reins. Hennessey sits, and looks around him, and wishes to god that he had known that Lord Thomas Hamilton was being transported here - that he had paid attention, all those years ago. He wishes that he had never had cause to step foot here in this corner of what must surely be Hades.

He could have stopped this, and he did not, and the knowledge will sit with him for the rest of his days, however short they may be once James catches sight of him. Or perhaps it will be Lord Hamilton who will do the deed, and Hennessey cannot say that he will blame the man one jot. He swings down off of the wagon when they park it, and ignores the twinging of his back. He’s earned worse -  a thousand times worse than this.

“I did not see Lord Hamilton in the fields,” he says. “He’s a tall man, and I cannot think that James will be -”

He stops, entirely, utterly. Vane is in the process of unhitching the horses, and Madi is climbing out of the cart -

And there, at a distance, there are two men walking across the grounds toward the barracks and the small guard post that seems to be attached to them. Their gait - their relative heights, and the red hair on the shorter -

“My God,” he chokes, and then he is moving, across the field, toward the guards following behind, and Vane sees too late - He hisses something or other, but Hennessey is not listening, because his son looks as though he has been through ten years of hell. He is being prodded with the butt of a gun and just for a moment Hennessey sees red.

There is an Englishman prodding his boy into moving like some kind of dog or - or -

"Hennessey! What the fuck do you think you’re doing-”

It is too late. Hennessey has reached the small troop of men, and Christ -

It has been all too long since the last time he felt satisfaction in his own deeds. The first man goes down with a dull thud, the second turns, and it takes Hennessey all of a second - all of one split second to cross the line into becoming the man he has not been in so many years, the man willing to kill to achieve his aims, to protect what he deems precious. The guard starts to cry out starts to fight, and then James is turning - surprised, but only for an instant. Vane has caught up. He deals with the second guard, a quick stab between the man’s ribs silencing him, and Hennessey wonders if he should be concerned that he feels somewhat cheated of the justice he had intended to deal out.

“Fucking reckless, stupid goddamn -” Charles starts, looking around them. “Fuck _. Fuck.”_

He turns to James, and in the process, he shields Hennessey from view.

“I hope you didn’t need either of those two for whatever plan you’ve got,” he says, voice laden with irony. “Think one’s still alive.”

Silence reigns for a moment.

“What?” James whispers, and Charles grins crookedly.

“Good to see you, James,” he says. “Nice hair.”

He would, Hennessey thinks, give all the gold in the world if he could only know that the look of utter, shocked relief and gratitude on his son’s face was directed at him. It is not. James stares, and then, like a man seeing a mirage on the horizon, he takes a step forward, and then another.

“Charles?” he asks, and then -

“Madi?”

****************************************************************************

His friends have come to save him, and if he had previously thought today was real and not a dream, he is now beginning to question that belief.

He had heard shouting. If he is truly honest with himself, he had heard the name and knows that the man in question cannot - absolutely _cannot be here._ He had turned, and now -

Charles Vane stands before him in the field with two dead guards at his feet, looking tired but grinning easily. Madi stands beside him, and neither one of them shimmers, or dissolves, as if - as if -  

“Hello, Captain,” Madi says, lips twitching upward in a smile, and James cannot help the choked sound that makes its way out of his mouth.

“What the fuck are you doing here?” he manages to ask in a strangled voice, and then they are moving forward, and their arms are around him. Madi is weeping into his chest, and ghosts do not weep real tears that can dampen his shirt. He is saved - wanted, missed, _rescued_ at last _,_ and he clings, tears escaping his eyes to slide down his face onto Madi’s hair and Charles’ beard.

“Came to get you out of all this,” Charles says roughly, and if the near bruising tightness of his grip is anything to go by, he is as relieved to be reunited as James. Charles clings a moment too long, and James lets him do it, holding on every bit as tight. The younger man rubs one hand up and down his back, and then pulls back and knocks their foreheads together before he allows Madi in between them. She does not hesitate to hug James tighter than he has been held since he first reunited with Thomas.

“You have been missed,” she tells him. “We feared for you. Are you alright?”

“We thought you were fucking dead.” Charles - _Charles_ , of all people, scolds, but only halfheartedly. “Again. You scared the piss out of us.”

“How - _how_ -?”

He’s sputtering. James knows it, but he cannot answer Madi’s question. He can only gape, and return their embraces, and try to wrap his mind around the fact that they are here, now, for him and no other.

“I am sorry it took so long,” Madi says solemnly. She reaches forward, and takes his hand between her own. “I could not get the answer out of Silver - he would not tell me.”

“We hijacked your gunpowder,” Charles says almost apologetically. He still has not stopped touching James’ shoulder, holding onto it with one hand. “It’s inside the gates now but -”

“I sincerely hope you haven’t hurt Fleming in the process.” Thomas’ voice comes from behind him, and James feels a shock go through him, because Thomas is here, and Charles is here, and -

The two taller men have spotted each other, and are now looking one another up and down, taking each other’s measure. It’s disconcerting.

“The cart driver’s alive,” Charles confirms. “You’re Hamilton?”

Thomas nods.

“I don’t believe we’ve met.”

James is going to cry. He’s going to laugh, and cry, and probably throw up all at once, because the two halves of his life have just crashed together, and he has no idea how to proceed.

“Thomas - meet Princess Madi and Charles Vane,” he introduces, his voice rasping a bit from the sudden dryness of his mouth. His head is still spinning, and if there were anything to sit down on, he might do it. “Charles - Madi.  This is Thomas Hamilton. He’s my - my -”

There is a beat of silence. Does he dare say it?

“I’m his lover,” Thomas says quietly. Trust him, James thinks, to tackle the problem head on. “It’s a pleasure to meet you. And who else -?”

He looks around. There was another - a third member of the rescue party that’s come for them, James remembers now. Where -

Thomas goes very still suddenly.

“James-” he starts, caution and alarm in his voice all at once. “James, I don’t think you wish to turn around just now -”

“James,” another voice says behind him. “James, my boy, I’m sorry-”

James turns. He faints a second later.


End file.
